Demos

Breaking The Girl - Demo

Liam McGrady 28/10/2005

Rating: 3/5

Breaking The Girl are… hang on… I've got it written down here somewhere… ah yes, “A four piece rock band from Bournemouth”. Plain and simple; no ridiculous proclamations of having a “wide range of influences from Bluegrass to Funk via Industrial Metal” like you see on some band bio's.

What they really should have said though is that “We write instantly likeable guitar based tunes, with a head nodding quality and have a penchant for the under valued Wah Wah pedal.”

Now I'm a real sucker for anything that vaguely resembles what is generally known as “Power Pop”, and first track 'So Cold' more than vaguely resembles it. A snappy riff, some cymbal crashing drums and a bit of Chuck Berry-ish soloing; what more d'you want? A dancing dwarf?

After the strange 'Death Star' that sounds like a pop-lite version of Weezer's 'Hash Pipe', comes the slightly more “rocking” 'Break The Wall'. Using a tried and tested trick beloved of young bands (this lot are little scamps of only sixteen years old), of nicking a tune from a well known song and covering it up so well, that you can't actually make it out, the song blasts off with a vicious riff that reminds me in some ways of The Velvet Underground's 'Rock & Roll' - interpreted by The Monkee's with big sod off distorted guitars.

Breaking The Girl also have a song called 'Algeron'. I really wanted to dislike this with its daft lyrics of, “Met a girl from Algeron, her name was Billie Jean/Her sister was her mom, people from Algeron ain't the same” but the sprightly acoustic strumming and rumbling drums are just infectious.

So overall this band are probably closer to Pop Punk or something than “Rock”, but who really cares about genres and all that? Not me anyway, and just let me know if you want one of those dancing dwarves.