Just how many successful bands can Wales produce? There’s definitely something in the water across the border and it seems Straight Lines have drank it until they’re literally pissing well crafted pop-rock songs out of their ears.
Debut album ‘Persistence in This Game’ is a mixture of The Automatic’s kookiness and Lotsprophets’ latter day rock anthems. Though they don’t sound as big as LP there’s definitely something there that will no doubt be built upon to create a chart-storming second album. There are infectious anthems (Loose Change, Runaway Now), heartfelt ballads (The Ballad of Peter Devine, Set Me on Fire and Feed Me to the Wolves) and all manner of rhythmic riffery (Versus the Allegiance) to whet the appetite and if a band gets a positive response from a Motorhead crowd then they must be ok, right?
It would be extremely difficult to say that ‘Persistence in This Game’ was dull, bland and bereft of anything redeeming a pop song. It’s full of hooks and no doubt many will find joy in this pleasant bunch but that doesn’t escape the fact that they are unexplainably grating. They’ll go far and besides this irrationality, rightly so, but something needs to change during the next step to gain full credibility. For now, if you like Scouting for Girls then you’re bound to like these, though that’s probably more of an insult than anything else.
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