The Driver Era - Girlfriend

If you’d ever wondered what The 1975 would have sounded like had they grown up in the sprawling outer-edges of a large American city as opposed to its Manchester equivalent, ‘GIRLFRIEND’, the second full-length from sibling duo The Driver Era, would go a long way to provide the answer. It possesses a slinky line in R&B-tinged, ‘80s-indebted pop. It’s peppered with funky basslines (see ‘Heaven Angel’ in particular), matter-of-fact lyricism and a reasonable earworm count (‘A Kiss’ makes like Metronomy’s ‘The Look’ as reimagined by Pharrell). And yet it’s impossible to shake a nagging feeling that it’s all a little too two-dimensional, not least thanks to ‘cray z babe e’, a track on which the piano stabs veer so litigiously close to ‘Bennie and the Jets’. If it was a desperate ploy for Frank Ocean comparisons they were after by doing so, put it this way: they’re not likely to be bringing creepy dolls to the Met Gala any time soon.