Singles

goFASTER>> - A Modern Education

Miss Fliss 23/03/2009

Rating: 1.5/5

Alcopop Records have been known to live beautifully up to their name and release music in the form of a bottle with the details of downloads on bits of paper found snugly within the confines. Exuberant youth signings goFASTER certainly pack a pop punch with aplomb to give the name further resonance. But these 5 songs in the form of an EP cut no individual mark. The shouty multi-male-vocals, the jerky where's-it-going-next guitars, the angular activity, and the build-up/slow down techniques have all been tried and tested to death. As I write, the person in the same room as me (my beau) observes that he used to hear this sort of pop-punk music on the radio when he was doing his homework, aged 15, and that sort of naïve 90s Evening Session/Steve Lamacq vibe runs amok resoundingly. Perhaps the younger Cats and Cats and Cats fan's interest might be piqued, this is definitely music for excitable teens. The old Bratpop issue of The Melody Maker comes to mind, and I'm moshing at Reading Festival 1998 all over again. GoFASTER are just too suspiciously sprightly - and why is there a lyric about Marks and Spencers? Good luck to them and all, probably go down a storm to teens on alcopops (which they'd need on the recent Wombats support tour, to get through the woeful Wombats), but even after drinking wine this music doesn't inspire an awful lot in me. And bands with capital letters and arrows in their name are not as quirky as they'd like to think. And don't be fooled by their New Wave inference, there is nothing here to suggest anything relating to the genre. I wasn't going to mention Bis, but lo and behold they are listed as an influence on the band's Myspace! Here, have a wacky picture of the band with a rubber chicken, a rubber ring and a gun. But don't let that put you off the fine Alcopop label, home to a host of good indie bands.

goFASTER Myspace

Alcopop Records website