Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you put together a demo. Enclose a nice personal letter (not a generic one sent out to everyone), a well put together and packaged CD, clearly marked, and containing music that dumps over the vast majority of signed efforts I have heard this year. It’s not that One Word Answer play a startling brand of new music or that they have a gimmick – they just play melodic punk music very, very well indeed. I am a stickler for bands that have huge choruses and love their melodies and OWA have them in abundance. Throw in some slick production, courtesy of John Mitchell, and you have a three-track CD which is classy, confident and eye-catching.
Coming across like a mixture of old and new Appease thrown together, the five-piece were pretty unknown to me until they emailed asking if they could send in their new demo. It arrived, it went in the stereo – and BOOM. The guitars are clean yet catchy, the vocals are spot on too, but for me it’s the melodies that make this stand out. Any record that bases its sound on pop-punk, or whatever you want to term it, has to be melodic and it has to have huge singalong choruses and tunes which stick in your head for days. OWA have a really good stab at it and come off positively. ‘My Last Goodbye‘ might be cliched in name, but it’s far superior in sound. Opener ‘Lost But Not Forgotten’ is a cracker, but it’s the closing title track which really sticks out. It’s very rare that an unsigned band’s CD stays in my stereo for more than a few days, but this is nearing three weeks.
Only Mistake Us For Friends have made such an impact on me this year that I wanted to go out and find out more. Now One Word Answer have made me sit up and take notice too. We’ve probably covered 300 cds this year and only two of them have been from small UK bands and made me think ‘oooh, this is pretty good’. OWA are nothing groundbreaking or new, but what they do they do exceptionally well. The future is very, very bright and I for one will be keeping a close eye on them.
www.onewordanswer.com
Paul