Emo schemo. I’m bored of it all now, I think I’ve finally snapped. Every single day a new record lands on my doormat and more often than not it’s someone playing the cliched and generic emo card. There’s a lack of originality, a lack of passion and…grr…it’s all the same identikit garbage. And before anyone has a whinge it’s got nothing to do with the ‘scene’ or a mesh cap – it’s merely too many lazy bands who can’t be arsed to find their own sound or do what they do well. If 2001 was the year of ska and 2002 pop-punk, then 2003 has been the year where Taking Back Sunday wannabes have arrived en masse. And while I enjoyed it for a while, I know want something new to bite me on the nose.
Lucky Thirteen sound nothing like TBS thankfully. But they partly fit into some of the categories I’ve outlined above. Their new 3-track EP is nothing new at all. It’s been done better a hundred times before and, in a very competitive ‘market’, you either need a gimmick, catchy-as-fuck songs or orginality to shine through. Thankfully L13 don’t have the first one but sadly they don’t have the other two either. What the three tracks do conjure is a ‘nice’ feel-good sound, and with nice being the most bland word in the dictionary you can sense that I feel it’s nothing special.
‘Stranger’s Stories’ has a good solid chorus with its “I will walk for hours” refrain one of those which does burrow into the brain, but the lack of power hinders it. The guitars (are there really two of them?) sound weak and when the distorted parts kick in there’s just nothing to kick on. ‘The Boundary’ reminds me of a track off the latest Stairwell record, which is probably incidental because I doubt the band would have heard the record before they recorded this song. But in doing so it highlights that there’s nothing new about what the Kingston crew are doing. It’s predictable fare, albeit done well. ‘Setting You Off’ is possibly the highlight, the crunchy guitars offset the vocals, which it has to be said are solid throughout. But there’s no sparkle and nothing that stands out from the pack, at least not for me anyway.
The cover is lovely mind you and limiting it to 500 hand-numbered copies is a nice touch. But I wouldn’t urge anyone to go out of their way to find a copy, unless you like your music of the obvious and heard-it-all-before variety. Ok, I’ve been harsh – but you don’t have to listen to different bands playing the same songs every single day. L13 aren’t horrible or unlistenable by any means, but this EP really doesn’t set the world alight.
www.lucky-thirteen.co.uk
Paul