The Magic Eye Pictures are a new band to me, they may not be to you I admit, and I only have this release, plus the release press release, to go on.
The press release says – in the way that press releases do sometimes – that they ‘bridge the gap between the ramshackle everyday storytelling of brit-pop and the heart-on-sleeve emotion of pop-punk’ and that the band ‘harbour the charm and innocence of early Ash, combining it with the raucousness of fellow Yorkshiremen The Cribs’.
That kind of helped me in that it gave me some idea of what to expect, but it doesn’t tell you, or me for that matter, whether the song is any good. And sometimes (no names, no pack drill) press releases are just plain wrong or somewhat misleading.
So firing up the song, I was grabbed immediately, I mean in mere seconds. This is no grower, it’s an immediate ‘grab you by the scruff of the neck, shake you down and kick your fucking arse’ track. This thing is so bloody raucous, it sounds better and better with each play, as you edge the volume up and up.
And yes, it has that brit-pop thing (specifically a Blur thing), and yes, there is a huge hit of pop-punk. But this, my friends, is only the beginning of the goodness this song bestows on us. There are the frankly gorgeous vocals, there are words that are absolutely great – words that bring the biggest grin to your face. There are guitars that fucking rock, bass that throbs and growls, drums that make you want to get up and rock out. And this is before the frankly wonderful drop-out. And the way it just ends, one moment it’s there the next it’s gone.
I gush, I know, but the thing is that the press release didn’t quite lead me to think that I’d love this as much as I do. It was misleading in that way.
This is a blast of raucousness with attitude in spades, an uplifting 3½ minutes of joyous sound. Turn it up loud and listen, throw yourself around the room, repeat until you just can’t do that anymore.
