ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Operator Please
YES YES VINDICTIVE BRILLE RECORDS 17.03.08 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk Sounding like nothing so much as a B52s put through a sonic compressor, Operator Please are a frenetic party band, all speed, silliness and jumping up and down excitedly. And there’s a place for that. Of course, there are competitors - Go! Team, Los Campesinos, etc. What they lack is range and dynamics – having been squashed to sound full-on and that gets a wee bit tiring but blame the producer for that. Shove it on a low-res MP3 and you might not even notice. The annoying (Just A Song About) Ping Pong makes more sense here - it’s all about pop meets indie meets punk sensibility and will last as long as a firework but burning as brightly with just as much concomitant noise. With a bit of space for the drums and keyboards to breathe, this production would be pretty red-hot and I’m anticipating live shows will add excitement. There’s a touch of the cutesy about them, you know, Kate Nash and all that, but that goes with the territory – this band are really really young and, refreshingly, are 50% female. It sounds like they figured out half these songs from things they’d want to dance to at the local indie club instead of just aiming for emulating a band they liked. Mind, they can’t help but pick up some recent influences along the way and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of them. Like the Yeah x3s, they need to learn to step back once in a while as 40 minutes spent in the company of the album gets tiring before it should. Maybe this is a band for mini-albums. If you had it on vinyl, you’d just play one side at a go, probably just before you go out, to get you in face-the-world-party-mood. Still, it shows promise and, if they’re still around this time next year, they might just surprise us with dancey pop with more depth. www.operatorpleaseband.com |