Demos

Strange Mutant Virus - Is it Bardot?

Tim Miller 28/05/2007

Rating: 1/5

This 4-track EP and its title track are dedicated to a Ms Brigitte Bardot ”with the Ray-Bans on” and comments - in quite a timely manner now that every girl in the sunshine is wearing sunglasses the size of bus wheels - on the vanity of fashion trends. Unfortunately, the song itself has no accompanying striking musical revelations, at best nodding to The Smiths' Ask with its pleasant cycle of chords and gently-picked guitar line. Lead singer Derek Callue struggles to hold a tune and has a bland, karaoke-esque timbre, the drums sound as if they were mixed in from a Casio keyboard preset, and the three-chord chorus 'aided' by an electric violin lacks any kind of punch at all.

Follower All Grown Up On TV pitches the same pleasant guitar sound but displaces any effect it might have had with its mismatched, dissonant chord changes. This second track also decides to omit a chorus at all, save perhaps for the moment a faux-trumpet comes in and Callue sings “Ba-ba baa ba ba”, which in my book barely counts. Meanwhile, déjà vu strikes with Are You Receiving Me?, recycling the verse of Bardot, and The Way You Talk About It, thankfully the final track, sounds like an ode to Oasis' Don't Look Back In Anger, only this time treating us to a guitar that is also not quite in tune, to pair with Callue's vocals. Charming.

The sparse PR that came with this EP mentioned that these four boys averaged 28, and I'd hastily suggest they don't give up the day jobs. Is It Bardot? was the question, but I doubt there'll be anyone interested enough to find out.

Strange Mutant Virus on myspace