Little Comets - Isles

Reviewing a record from a pretty new band based on just those three minutes never seems very right or fair. Hell, there’s time to get a bit of back story here. Research, admittedly brief, says Little Comets are influenced by Roald Dahl, Ella Fitzgerald and Paul Simon. Wow. Needle is going on the record (well, you know, track scrolled to, screen touched) with genuine anticipation.

Oh. No. No, no, no. ‘Isles’ sounds so of-the-moment and so, depressingly, like everything else. Feeding on the ever-decreasing circles of musical taste it also sounds like any also-ran from the mid-nineties you might care to name. How many songs have sounded exactly like this over the last 15 years? Ah, there’s no quick answer to that. Loads though. And loads more.

It appears to aim for an anthemic bounce alongside indieboypop with social concerns, but ends up sounding like a comatose Kaiser Chiefs with Dolores O’Riordan on lyrics duty. Yeah, that bad. ‘The streets are bleak, the kids are running wild’. Oh please. It could soundtrack a particularly dull moment in Hollyoaks.

How can anyone be content with this blandness? How is it ok to be happy not to matter but to just exist and make up the numbers? They must know this isn’t special. Nothing disappoints more than the average. This is very disappointing.