Albums

Scouting For Girls - Scouting For Girls

Matt Churchill 21/09/2007

Rating: 2.5/5

Hotly tipped trio Scouting For Girls bring us their highly anticipated self-titled debut album. The North London band are riding high on a wave of pop optimism as they seek to become the next band to break into the mainstream and make the big time.

The three life long friends have combined to produce an album that is indie-pop in the extreme, following the likes of The Feeling into that hotbed of music which seeks credibility and the ability to break girls' hearts.

Opening track 'Keep On Walking' starts well enough and the Scissor Sisters-esque piano intro leads into a song that sounds more like Athlete than Athlete do these days which leads into single 'She's So Lovely' which features the horrid “I love the way she plays It cool/I think that she is beautiful” couplet which, after 50 years of music, you would have thought should have become redundant by now. Unfortunately, for those seeking credibility and musical ingenuity, you may leave. Track three 'It's Not About You', is sung well, but falls short lyrically, with few words and the title repeated endlessly. 'The Airplane Song' is a prominently piano influenced tune about a love that flies way, despite being compared to a strawberry milkshake, awww.

'Heartbeat' starts, with, yes, a heartbeat, before being replaced the stabbed piano chords but sounds almost 'N'Sync-ish and 'Elvis Ain't Dead' is nothing more than filler. The painfully slow to start 'I'm Not Over You' uses an age old descending chord progression that the likes of Travis mastered, used, and then disposed of 12 years ago without making it sound twee and village-idiot-esque. 'I Need A Holiday' reprises the piano/vocal/drums crash with guitars formula in a song about needing to get away for a break. 'The Mountains Of Navaho' sounds like McFly, only slightly more grown up and LP-closer 'James Bond' is actually terrible about said-hero.

I'm sure that girls (not meaning to be sexist here, sorry) will love it and the singles from the album will get a truckload of airplay, but there's nothing that stands out as being musically interesting or progressive here. We can hope that should a second album arise, it'll be far more challenging and less market-friendly than this music-by-numbers initial offering.