It's not often these days that I sit down and listen to a new band for the first time and simply devour an entire record by them. Sure, I quite regularly come across a band that has been kicking around for a few years (or decades) and listen to a seminal album that blows me away, but I just haven't found myself that wowed by 'new music' in the last few years. Many are the times that I have lamented to others that music these days just doesn't appeal to me as it did even a few years ago.
Take 2003 and 2004 for example. In those years alone, five albums were released that I would struggle to justify leaving out of my top ten favourite albums of all time. For the record, in case anyone cares, they are 'Deja Entendu' by Brand New, 'Where You Want To Be' by Taking Back Sunday, 'Futures' by Jimmy Eat World, 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' by My Chemical Romance and 'Watch Out!' by Alexisonfire.
In the case of all of these records, bar Taking Back Sunday's, they were the first full albums I had heard by the bands after they had made the breakthrough. Each one in turn knocked me clean out of my socks, just for me to put them back on again and dust myself off in time to get knocked right back out of them again. It was almost unfair.
Now, I'm not trying to pull a grandad and say music was simply better in my day, rather that some of the styles of music I am inclined to listen to on a regular basis have evolved in a direction that doesn't appeal to me as much as the form it was in from about 2001-2006 (and if you can't work out what one of my favoured genres is from the list above, then I recommend a trip to Wikipedia and YouTube, post haste!) But that's the way music works, it constantly evolves in to new styles and trends and no-one is guaranteed to like the new direction it is taking, even if you liked where it was before.
In a way I'm quite grateful for this. Whereas before I was tied to listening to only a couple of genres on a regular basis, interspersed with the odd album or song from other styles, now that I can no longer rely on this narrow field for my kicks, I have had to expand my listening to include a much wider variety of music, and it's thanks to this that I feel more able to offer opinions about music on a blog like this.
However, this post isn't about why I became a blogger. For the first time in a long while, the other day I was introduced to a new band that I knew I was going to love within 30 seconds of the start of the first song I heard. The band in question is Fine Young Firecrackers, to whom I was introduced by an old work colleague. I was directed to a link where I could download a four track EP, 'From the Ground Up', which I instantly fell in love with.
A five-piece pop-punk act from Liverpool, Fine Young Firecrackers are full of the sort of youthful energy that has been sorely lacking from the genre since the likes of Blink 182, Green Day, the Offspring and Sum 41 grew up as bands and ditched the light-hearted and vivacious sound that characterised their earlier work.
With this EP, Fine Young Firecrackers' sound will inevitably be likened to the earlier works of bands like Fall Out Boy and fellow British pop-punkers You Me At Six, particularly with the last track of the EP, 'Landslide'. However, the songs offer so much more than this comparison suggests.
Blending at times a forceful drive to the guitars that is reminiscent of the more visceral aspects of Brand New's 2001 debut album 'Your Favorite Weapon', or the melodic hardcore of the Movielife's 2003 swansong '40 Hour Train Back to Penn', whom the band themselves site as an influence, with a similarly characteristic flowing vocal style as Dallas Green of City and Colour (and formerly Alexisonfire, RIP), all of the songs have a lot more bite to them than many of the bands that are currently putting out similar material.
'Landslide' in particular is a delight. After three minutes of fast-paced punk rock it isn't afraid to hit you hard and out of the blue with a cheeky, measured breakdown right at the end, and that itself characterises why this band is surely destined for greater things. They simply aren't afraid to occasionally ditch the traditional pop-punk methodology and hit you with something new and unexpected, which is very refreshing indeed.
Keep your eyes on these ones. I have a feeling that if they can keep on top of their obvious potential and use it to develop their sound for a full length release, you might be hearing a lot more from the Fine Young Firecrackers.
'From the Ground Up' is available as a free digital download here.
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