Headway - The Start EP

Moving formulaically between muscley power ballad moments and pneumatic breaths of teary pianos, Headway’s self-pitying predictable ‘The Start EP’ soon makes you wish they never had.

The Nottingham five-piece’s sound is a nauseatingly clichéd mosaic of pseudo-emotional drums, melodramatic guitars and whimpering vocals bawling out contrite bollocks to whichever unfortunate soul their ‘lyrics’ lament.

‘The Start’, the opening and arguably most puke-inducing track is a less heartfelt reworking of Hoobastank’s ‘The Reason’; wailing out ‘you are the start… of something good for me’, vocalist Dave Wright shows us that he’s changed, he’s sensitive, he’s deep.

‘Always The Same’ continues, unsurprisingly, in much the same vein, as Wright unleashes his ‘feelings’ in true Embrace style: ‘you are the only thing that keeps me alive…’ Wow, how uplifting. Presumably such sycophantic schmaltz is supposed to be romantic? Well it’s not, it’s bloody depressing, in fact it’s hardly surprising he wants to kill himself, making music like this.

As the final track, ‘Finish What We Started’ (see what they did there?) dribbles in, it’s raid the bathroom cabinet time as Wright’s voice contorts itself into an even more precocious tone of self-pity. The guitars are slightly more upbeat here, though the drumming begins to sound like the work of a two year old, and Wright is really asking for a beating as he ‘faaades awaaay’, and good riddance to him.