Contact! Contact!,
TellisonTellison have started to create something of a buzz around themselves recently, and with the help of some higher profile support slots under their belts, perhaps the timing of release for this debut album, whilst frustratingly drawn out for some, may have come at just the right time. First listen around and the thing that strikes me most is how delightfully British this release sounds. This comes naturally and without ever dangling too close to the faux pas waters of the: “insert over-the-top English accent here” vocal delivery many British bands have adopted recently in an attempt to throw off comparisons to their US peers.
Unfortunately for me despite memorable opener ‘Hanover Start Clapping’ this record doesn’t really kick in until the infamous ‘New York, New York, New York’ breaks out half way through the album. After that the record is a lot more coherent. ‘Architects’ is a fantastic anthemic bastard of a song that’s strangely uplifting in a “why is he singing about scarves?” kind of way, and were Matt Pryor the vocalist behind ‘Henry went to Paris’ it could easily be mistaken for a Get up Kids classic (minus the somewhat bizarre choice of keyboard sounds at two-and-a-half minutes through.)
However, for me this album is frustratingly inconsistent. The musicianship is at a high enough standard, the song writing excellent and the feel-good factor associated with Tellison is here in abundance (‘Disaster! Disaster!’ Is another great example of this) but there just aren’t enough tracks on here that make me want to listen to them again and again. They’ve managed to write 4-5 extremely catchy songs on a 12 track release, which would be fine if Tellison were a band with a number of musical tools. In truth though Tellison’s music has never been about anything but big choruses with the occasional hook thrown in for good measure, and for a band of this style there are 2 or 3 too many filler tracks within this album for my comfort.
In a way I feel as if I’ve been too harsh on Tellison looking back on this review. ‘Contact! Contact!’ is an extremely enjoyable record and if you’re inclined towards a memorable burst of catchy, melodic rock then I’d strongly recommend it. (Believe me you could do a hell of a lot worse.) For me though there’s a lack of depth and originality in the song structures that prevents me from getting quite as excited about this release as some of the reviews I’ve read, but on saying that it’ll probably find its way inside my stereo again much sooner than expected.
Rich
