November Is For Friends – ‘Subject: To Change’

Lo-fi is a tightrope. While some can master and harness its audible nonchalance, far more commonly it is used (with varying levels of success) as a mask for musical ineptitude. Falling hard into the second camp, ‘Subject: To Change’ is the debut release from Philadelphia’s November Is For Friends, and while the band’s short lifespan may account for some of its failings, the five tracks on here ultimately offer nothing more than a textbook example of how not to make a first impression.

Mere seconds into opening catastrophe ‘Something Bitter Sweet (Kelly)’ you are provided ample warning as to the what the next fifteen minutes have to offer. A clusterfuck of jarring instrumentation and poor timekeeping combine with a guitar tone that sounds more like a wheezing cough than anything resembling an instrument. The remaining instruments fare no better, with the majority of the EP sounding like it was recorded on a mobile phone in the middle of the practice space. A practice space made of tin. The shoehorned-in breakdown is cringeworthy at best, and even the ‘oohs’ laid over the subsequent outro can’t muster the type of knowingly tongue-in-cheek attitude that A Day To Remember have used to build a career on this endearingly unsophisticated song structure.

‘Be A Man’ and ‘I’ll Be Doing Something Soon’ are an excruciating attempt at the earnest emo their beloved North-West has built its name on, and the clichéd name-drops and allusions – such as the skin-crawling “I’m sitting in my car / procrastinating homework / and listening to The Story So Far” in ‘I’ll Be Doing Something Soon’ – don’t work half as well as they’d like to hope. Desperate stabs of Motion City Soundtrack-esque synth and the occasional ska-punk horn section offer little more than another grating sound fighting for attention, and further glimpse into November Is For Friends’ lack of direction.

Campfire ditty ‘Jake’s Song’ offers slight respite from the disarray, if only due to the necessity of stripping down the previously cluttered instrumentation for the EP’s token acoustic number. Sadly, this just leaves more room for the awful, tuneless vocals to take centre-stage Closing off the EP, the oh-so-wittily titled ‘Fuck You’ dives straight back into the cataclysmic lo-fi dirge of the preceding tracks. One can only hope that the EP’s title is a literal one, as there are a lot of changes November Is For Friends should consider before taking their second step.

TOM CONNICK