When they’re at their full on catchiest, such as ‘Damn Rough Night’ or ‘Car Crash’, Artist vs Poet sound great. Sure, they’re nothing the world hasn’t seen a billion times before, but bands of this ilk simply need to be catchy and little else. It’s all about the singalongs and AvP have plenty of them. However, I wrote the band off a little on the basis of the last EP because they fell back on too many genre cliches and ‘Favourite Fix’ again has too many ‘heard-it-all-before’ moments. It’s why, for me anyway, they’re still a little way off the better bands of the genre.
‘We’re All The Same’, for instance, features a few too many blips and samples for my liking. The band can write straight-up pop-punk anthems, there’s no need to over-do things and it’s that over-doing that slightly puts me off. It’s frustrating because there are some really, really good songs on here – the band can clearly write a melody and the use of vocal harmonies is top drawer. But the likes of ‘Adorable’ and ‘He’s Just Not Me’ rely too heavily on electronics, to the detriment of the album overall.