Demos

The Benwahs - Come To Mine

Owain Paciuszko 10/03/2010

Rating: 3/5

Self-professed 'panda punk' from Birmingham four piece The Benwahs opens with the very lively title track, with Suzie's vocals all excitable and barely catching her breath between lyrics. This new iteration of the band was formed by Suzie after the London-based group broke up post Hollyoaks performance, and now she's recombobulated the group from her Birmingham hometown.

In My Head shares tempo with this EP's lead track, and could almost be mistaken for an epilogue to the last song, The choruses of 'In my head, in my - in my head...' are fired out with Jon and Jason providing backing vocals, that work well and bring a bit of distinction to these parts of the song. Fortunately The One has a certain angry pop balladry to its arrangment, with Suzie bemoaning 'I don't want to waste your day.'

Final track Keep Me On has a frenetic, hi-speed apocalyptic cascading cacophony to its joyfully, manic choruses and then a fevered Suzie pleading to her lover which creates an excellent structure to this loose-limbed, danceable chunk of pop-punk fun.

The first two tracks here are something of a damp squib for the potentially, and purposefully, explosive and reactive nature of The Benwahs, their sound is a bit too samey (to one another and to other pop-punk acts), but beyond that this group have some great ideas and a good sense for good time music. It's still early days for this second attempt under The Benwahs banner, and this EP is weighted evenly on either side, so time will tell...