Go Audio

Made Up Stories

Written by: PP on 31/07/2008 09:17:43

Bands like Go Audio make a reviewer\'s job enjoyable. They put out simple records that are easy to like (or to hate), they require next to no effort to listen to, and even your grandparents are sure to be tapping their feet should you play the album for them. I\'m of course talking about a pop punk band of some sort - a major label one if I may add - and their debut album \"Made Up Stories\".

To be fair, the band isn\'t strictly pop punk in the Hit The Lights or Fall Out Boy sense. With an eccentric and characteristic vocalist in James Matthews, Go Audio sound a bit like The Killers gone electro-pop punk, if that comparison makes any sense to you. On top of that, they\'ve managed to write two songs that, at least in my books, rate among the top 5 best pop-flavored songs of 2008 so far.

The title track, which opens the album, is one of those two. If you aren\'t singing along to the \"don\'t go back and pretend to tell me the night you\'ve had with your made up stories\" chorus by the end of the song, you\'re either deaf, stupid, or close-minded. This is a song that should shoot to #1 in its first week of release, as it\'s so perfectly tuned for the radio, starting from the up-beat verse disco beat, through the synthesizers happying up the sound, and finishing in the easily memorable lyrics. Now enter track two, \"So Quiet You Were\", another fantastic electro-pop track which has a chorus to die for. Vocalist Brand-*cough*-James is the man of the hour again, although the song inclines me to believe he has been listening a little bit too much of another small UK band Lights. Action!.

Nonetheless, if one of these two songs doesn\'t chart #1 this year especially with the promotional machine of Epic Records behind them...insert a threat of something I\'ll do then to the radio stations.

So all\'s good, right? There\'s just one problem. Aside from \"Brake! Brake!\" and _possibly_ \"Take The Floor\" (although I\'m stretching it), the rest of the album is plain filler, generic pop punk crap and boring ballads that nobody wants to listen to. That there are pianos and synths scattered everywhere doesn\'t do any good for the band, as those bands are a dime a dozen these days. Okay, I might be a bit harsh here because there are a couple of decent songs on the album, but it\'s nothing we wouldn\'t have heard a hundred times before.

The disco beats of the two first tracks rarely appear again, and when they do, they sound contrived, forced, and seem to lack a purpose. It might be a cliché to say this, but this stinks like a major label \"write two to three singles\" formula from five miles away. Which really sucks, because had the band written an album\'s worth of \"Made Up Stories\", we\'d be very close to the first 10 ever given to an electro-pop punk band on this site. Lets hope that for next time, the band won\'t release anything this rushed, rather spend an extra year writing, and drop a bomb on the scene instead.

6

Download: Made Up Stories, So Quiet You Were
For the fans of: The Killers, Lights. Action!, disco pop punk
Listen: Myspace

Release date 25.08.2008
Epic Records

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.