Count Your Blessings

Like Gum In Your Hair

Written by: PP on 29/04/2009 17:53:50

While the past 12 months has seen an influx of old school styled pop punk bands with raw guitars, an overdose of energy and New Found Glory worship, Count Your Blessings belong to the other trend that began saturating pop punk a few years ago. They have perfect production, bubblegum-poppish vocal harmonies (exaggeration, I know), and audible influences from household names like All Time Low, Hit The Lights, The Academy Is..., Cartel... and so on and so on. They've released two EP's before to huge success overseas, garnering them over 2 million Myspace plays, and they've just released their debut album "Like Gum In Your Hair".

The opening paragraph should've already given you an idea of how these guys sound like, but I'm going to make it crystal clear and just say these guys are your regular by-the-books pop punk band focusing more on the pop than on the punk side of things. Yeah, they've got catchy songs and memorable choruses aplenty, but we've heard this type of sound done brilliantly soooooooooo many times now that nothing short of incredible will cut it in this genre anymore. Count Your Blessings songs aren't bad per se, but they're still easily forgettable and indistinguishable from the vast mass of perfectly produced pop punk out there. They don't initiate the sort of singalongs that Hit The Lights or All Time Low songs do either. There's some evidence of trying to mix things up a bit with the occasional distant gang shout-backed chorus but these are so few and far between that they don't really make a difference. They have some keyboard as well but it's only in a supporting role, and thus fails to make an impression; the first time I noticed it was there was in the beginning of sixth song "Friday Night Alone".

You can't fault Count Your Blessings on many areas, as their instrumentation, vocal harmonies and choruses are on par with scene standards today. But while everything seems to be under control on paper, the band is missing the two or three hit songs in the vein of "Dear Maria", "Runaway", or "Bodybag" that'd elevate them to higher ratings. Looking at their Myspace page has me thinking that at least 1 million of those Myspace plays can be attributed to their funky haircuts and bright-coloured scene design t-shirts, because musically they are a perfect example of average in pop punk.

5

Download: Sweet And Petite, Fell For This
For the fans of: Hit The Lights, Cartel, All Time Low, Fall Out Boy
Listen: Myspace

Release date 02.02.2009
Stand By Records

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