‘Rule Number One’ isn’t too bad for an extended EP – at seven songs it’s perhaps a track or two on the long side, but at least the band have plenty of good ideas, even if they’re not always as well executed as they could be. For example, ‘01622’ has a pretty nifty chorus, but at almost six minutes long it takes too long to get to the money shot, so to speak. The band’s sound is also a curious mixture, switching from a more rock-based background to a poppier, perkier, punkier tone in the swift blink of an eye.
Extending a piano into ‘Piece Of You’ is a clever move, even though the song itself isn’t the greatest but it’s this kind of musical nous that will always gain points. There’s no doubt One Day Elliott know how to write a tune – ‘Two Night Stand‘ and ‘The Closer I Get’ have good qualities – but the tracks on this EP are often drawn out or over-complicated. It’s often better to do the simple things well, rather than make the more complicated things sound messy. One Day Elliott‘s major problem is that they really don’t know who they want to be – there are too many ideas going on so their identity crisis stops them from being a great band, instead making them pretty good. With a solid singer and some decent ideas, it shouldn’t take too much hard work to take them up to a higher level.
www.onedayelliott.com
Paul