Item: The Ordinary Boys - The Ordinary Boys
Rating: 2

Reviewer: Henry Boon

Released: 2nd October 2015

Label: Treat Yourself Records

After nearly 10 years since their last album, The Ordinary Boys are back - and they’re taking things back to basics. With the original ‘Over the Counter Culture’ trio plus Spectrals’ Louis Jones on guitar (he and Preston met stage-diving at a Cribs show and decided to work together, as you do) their fourth, self-titled album ditches the progression of their last two LPs and steps back to the happy-go-lucky punk influences of their inception.

With Preston naming this album an homage to the kind of punk and hardcore music that inspired him and Jones to pick up guitars in the first place, it’s surprising how little heart exists amongst a collection of tracks that feel like they’re going through the motions.

Opener ‘About Tonight’, combined with ‘Awkward’, both feel fleetingly classic and deliberate, the simple guitar licks and catchy vocals for a brief instant capturing what The Ordinary Boys hoped to bring with them in their return to the limelight. It’s not long before the energy quickly ebbs away, falling flat for the remainder. This fourth outing feels overly confident in recapturing the sound The Ordinary Boys built themselves on. Guitar parts quickly become dull and repetitive while the vocals fall into simple, unimaginative rhyming structures both predictable and impersonal.

Let’s be honest, nobody is expecting any great depth or intricacy from Preston and co., rather the kind of good-time bangers that have afforded them success in the past. There are smatterings of this throughout, though no single track ever quite gets there; ‘I’m Leaving You’ races along, while ‘Losing My Cool’’s big chorus and pitchy riffs close in on the pop-punk sound The Ordinary Boys are after. However, every time this album finds its groove, a song like ‘Panic Attack’ comes along and scatters the clues. It’s by the numbers sing-song blandness cutting through any sense of fun in a heartbeat, bringing things crashing back down to earth.

This is an album that feels like it’s been written with a sense of ‘Yeah we know how to do this, shouldn’t be a problem’. The times when The Ordinary Boys actually do know what they’re doing and start to head in the right direction are broken up by tracks that feel like they’ve been chucked together lethargically and arrogantly, following old patterns without any real coherent line of thought. It’s clear what this self-titled LP is supposed to be, but it’s a record that ultimately struggles to be anything but bland, it’s all just a bit too ordinary, boys.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, The Ordinary Boys