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Boy Kill Boy - The Stars And The Sea

The first I heard of Boy Kill Boy was when they opened for the La’s on their reunion tour. In the normal course of being a reclusive genius, Lee Mavers didn’t bring his band out until about an hour and a half after they were due on. Boy Kill Boy came out ten minutes after the LA’s were supposed to have been out, apologised and flew through a set that no one really listened to.

They looked a bit like the Bravery and now I know they sound like them too. They’re back, apparently, with second album. This is the sort of music usually made by men wearing suits and eyeliner. The image, like the sound, is over produced. Boy Kill Boy are a guitar band who use the full circle of strange things that sound like sirens and car computer error messages.

They outdo themselves with ‘A OK’. There isn’t a trick or anything to distinguish it from the rest of the album, besides being excellent. The rest of the album is not bad but about as adventurous as holidaying in your kitchen.

After a few listens, ‘Stars and the Sun’ feels like time put aside for the rhythm guitar to mate with… whatever that bleeping instrument is. They both play within a few seconds of each song yet they don’t riff off at each other at all. You could take either out and still have much the same song.

You miss it until ‘Two Souls’, the album’s last song. It’s meant to be a ballad with vacuously gushing lyrics like ‘these two souls just can’t be one…’ When you listen you just wonder how you would ever dance to it without those bleeps.

Boy Kill Boy are no iconoclasts. They make half decent music that fits comfortably into genre titles and comparisons to bands that have come before and every now and again they reveal a song writing ability worthy of a record deal.

They open for bands that are much better, put out half decent albums to order and will hopefully leave us with a Best Of when they break up. Only the most expansive history of pop music will feature it as anything but a footnote.