If you take Paige‘s demo at face value, it’s a pretty poorly recorded couple of tracks that reference HelloGoodbye and This providence and have very little of their own identity. But the more you listen to the quartet, the more you realise that beneath al the generica is a band bursting with talent. While their ideas aren’t executed particularly well, the song structures and attempts at melodies and harmonies deserve recognition.
The major problem I have with Paige is that their recordings are terrible. they basically sound like they’ve tape-recorded a band practice by plonking a recording device in the middle and pressing play and record, so it’s impossible to gauge just how good the band are. The vocals are weak in places, but to be fair Lewis White seems to hit most of the notes and with some work to make his sound more distinctive, it would fit well with what the band are trying to do. The use of keys is not over-cooked, while the backing vocals add a rather polite layer to proceedings. The downside is that this type of music is over-saturated and Paige do nothing new, but they do what they do reasonably well – I’d just like to see if they can pull it off with better recordings and in a live environment. If they can, they could be ones to watch.
www.myspace.com/paigeuk
paul