Demos

Sunday School - This Swan Will Break Your Arm

Owain Paciuszko 19/01/2009

Rating: 3/5

With the kind of immediate pop-punk of Green Day-lite, and similar angsty post-teen lyrics and catchy choruses for some healthy 'rocking out', there's something a little safe to Sunday School which belittles any energy they may be mustering.

Little Happy Harmony opens the record with a chorus memorable for the duration but instantly forgotten once the song is done. Three Line Whip fares better, it possesses a sunset melody that switches into early-Nada Surf noise for the chorus; but, somewhat detrimentally, for a British band they are determined to escape connections to the UK music scene, proudly claiming in the press notes that they are 'doing something different from the majority of the British music scene (e.g. no regional accents, no "The" prefix on our name...)'. However in their bid to distance themselves from their neighbours they find themselves sounding like many American bands that emerged around the time of Weezer (art seems a distant cousin to Undone (The Sweater Song)); post-Pavement acts that eschewed Malkmus and co's flitty, twitchy garage genius into something more straight-forward, pop and traditionally structured.

This all poses another problem, because it's not bad per se, it's just 'not bad Weezer' and this leaves me wondering what Sunday School really sound like.