Sportsday Megaphone - So Many Colours / So Little Time

If we can take anything from the first years of this millennium, it’s that any videogame in the eighties had an amazing soundtrack. For Hugh Frost (AKA Sportsday Megaphone), his diet consisted of Mario for breakfast, Sonic for lunch and everything else for dinner.

Lesser bands who attempt the whole blips and beeps of that vein normally seem a bit too anaemic, painting over the cracks of a song. Frost can be a bit guilty of this; see opener ‘Song For The Owls’, which is little more than him tinkering on a Casio, but this is nowhere near as bad as bands like Hadouken! and once the album kicks in there’s a lot less instrumental and a lot more of the retro game kicking in. ‘For Better, For Worse’ sees Frost rallying against money, while the lyrics may chant: ‘For better / For worse / A blessing / A curse’, it’s the fast and distinct music that pulls you in to it’s livid mantra.

‘So Many Colours’’ best track, ‘Meet Me In The Middle’, after a very ‘Kid-A’-like electronica intro descends into lustful melodies, before being cut off into very much less tuneful ‘Carrying The Years’, which seemingly doesn’t know what to do with guest Rebekka Rea, so she just sings over almost everything in hope that something sticks.

Unfortunately after this the album seems to have trouble locating a coherent style and this really drags it back, as it doesn’t really seem to able to master any style after the opening salvo. ‘LA’ bristles with the anger of ‘For Better, For Worse’, yet comes off as weaker as it’s core lyric ‘This is the USA / And if you’re not on the team / You can stay on the street for the rest of your life’ is misguided and has been been knocking around since, well, independence day.

‘YO YO Loveboats’ falls under the weight of it’s own ambition, so while the Casio is spitting out the Sonic thrills, the main song is taking on Alkaline Trio for pop-punk frills. It’s not necessarily bad, but the two aspects don’t really gel well together, both getting in the way of their respective hooks.

This is an album that has a heart, a DIY sensibility and some attractive melodies buried away. Maybe once the kinks have been ironed out, Hugh Frost’s name may be coming from megaphones, for now though it’s best to use this debut as a pick’n’mix.