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Review: OneGirlOneBoy EP
Indie | Friday 31st May 2013 | Osh
OneBoyOneGirl almost hit the sound they’re going for with their self-titled EP, and I almost wanted them to.
They’re a duo from Nottingham, and they’d tell you they’re halfway between Goldfrapp and Garbage (that alt-rock group from a while back). I’m not convinced, but they are halfway between a lot of other things – at their best they pull it all together excitingly well, but it needs to happen more frequently.
“Life in all its warped glory” – that’s how they’re marketing it. I think that’s taking it a bit far, the record is convincingly glum and existential, but it’s more ‘life in a bit of its warped glory’. ‘Dirty Town’ is nothing like a Goldfrapp record – it’s tinny and groaning, not wobbling and sparkling, and ‘Wasted’ isn’t punk, it’s polished.
You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s nothing new – that it’s overbearing groan-rock. At their best though, OneGirlOneBoy marry a marvellously sundry batch of genres into a new whole, it just takes a while to work it out. I get the Garbage footprints – elegant, portentous crumbs of mid-track yelping, and the strident ‘If This is Love’ does close with some vaguely Goldfrappy synth-pop. At its best the EP is snakey and seductive, shimmering but gothic; bluesy! ‘Sylvia’ integrates pop-punk and ‘This One Boy’ is tantalizingly gradual. ‘Half Garbage half Goldfrapp’ – man, that’s a tidy phrase.
More often than not though, it’s a painful middle. The genre bending is subtle, but sometimes so subtle it’s non-existent and I can’t stand the slimy prog-metal that’s left. The permanence of One Boy’s guitar on ‘Wasted’ isn’t the alt-rock underpinnings of an album sprinkled with shimmering pessimism; it’s interesting and different only because it’s so dire. The great bits on OneGirlOneBoy are too sparse.
‘OneGirlOneBoy’ is out June 24 on Forth Recordings, and you can see them at The Social in London on the 22nd. Listen to ‘Sylvia’ below:
Written by Alex Dean - AlexDean94
