aaamusic | On 18, Mar 2012

 

When first hearing EP opener ‘The Fix’, there’s a bewildering mental leap from the skittering percussion and uneven, possibly-unhinged vocal delivery in the intro and verses that make me feel like I’m listening to Paris Suit Yourself’s cleaned-up pop song. Genetlemen’s Club are entirely an indie band du jour, with the watered-down afrobeat meets rock dance percussion, and Bloc Party minimalistic post-punk indie rock guitars and vocals. The bassline too has echoes of Bloc Party’s disco moments, and the lyrics are pretty recognisable too. The follow-up track ‘Accents’ holds a darker, bassier, Editors-esque mournfulness and thudding percussion, but the overly pervasive guitars sound almost identical, and the soul/disco bassline too sounds incredibly familiar. The lyrics are a marked improvement, with a mini narrative and desperate edge that match the vocal style that teeters on the borders of normal, although the instruments seem to belong to another song entirely. Namely, the previous song.

‘Rolling Swiftly’ again suffers a similar fate. Its promising art-punk disco plod that the militaristic drums and jaunty yet brooding bassline and the smooth yelp of the vocals tell a different story from the guitars which again sound nearly identical to the previous two songs. This one especially begs for a change of pace and mood from nearly all fronts, and almost achieves it in the slackening faux-slow moment near the end and the almost Adam & The Ants style galloping rhythm, but again it just sounds a bit too similar to everything else on the EP.

 

Gentlemen’s Club aren’t without potential, and ‘Everything In Colour’ has a good song floating around in it somewhere, the problem being that the release seems to also be three drafts of that same unfinished song. If they could hone and diversify their sound from “vague” to “vaguely interesting” and even “interesting” they could be onto something.

 

Katie H-Halinski