Albums

Album Review: We The Kings

[Album: We The Kings]
[Label: Virgin Records]

I have decided after listening to this record that when I next go to visit the mighty US of A I am going to make sure I have a good week’s worth of time spare. And the reason for this I hear you ask? Well I am determined to go find the bloody factory that keep’s on churning out this over-produced, over-generic and personality free drivel and bomb it! I have a feeling this may be the same factory Disney uses to keep genetically creating their seemingly endless supply of children stars because essentially that’s what We The Kings are –- a Disney-fied rock band.

We The Kings have succeeded in adding bugger all to an already hugely over-saturated market with this album but maybe this is due to timing more then anything. You see this album was released over a year ago in the states and whilst I have no idea why it’s taken so long to get a release here in the UK one thing I do know for certain is that it’s too little too late. In the last year we have literally been bombarded with wave after wave of American power-pop bands doing their level best to get as many songs as they can onto episodes of One Tree Hill and The OC. It’s almost like there is some kind of industry in-joke or competition running and whoever wins gets to record the same album 4 times in a row but just change the words a little. Perfect motivation for some I would imagine but for the rest of us the joke is wearing rather thin now.

I would be lying though if I said it was all bad. Tunes such as ‘Skyway Avenue’, ‘Check Yes Juliet’ and ‘This Is Our Town’ actually show that they have some talent when it comes to song writing. The real problem is that it is so sugar-coated, samey and passionless that there is no reason at all to give them more then one listen. More importantly however, and the real killer for me, is that you could easily release this album with the name of at least 20 ‘different’ bands on the cover and no body would be able to tell them apart, not even the bands themselves I suspect. You could argue this type of music is really just about fun and being young and with that in mind I will defend We Are Kings in the context of the genre by saying they are easily as good as this week’s flavour of the week ‘Boys Like Girls’. They do have some good songs and they do possess an ability to write good chorus’s but its so heavily ‘packaged’ over-produced and marketed that this really counts for nothing but an exercise in shameless major label commercialism. To be expected I know but it’s the band I feel sorry for at the end of the day.

If the current trend of these types of bands becoming huge overnight, fueled by the disposable income of teenage girls and teenage boys who look like teenage girls, then I would expect to seem them gunning for the support on the next Fall Out Boy tour. Which is great of you love that sort of thing. If however you like your bowl of pop served with a sprinkling of substance you won’t find anything here that you have not tasted before or better.

For Fans Of: Bedlight For Blue Eyes, Cobra Starship, Boys Like Girls

Band Link:
We The Kings

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Amazon UK | Amazon US

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