Tin Soldiers // Just What I Needed // 18/04/11 // On The Run
Hmm. I’m getting a very strange sort of déja vu here. And it’s not that I’ve heard this song before, it’s more subtle than that. It’s more like I’m sitting on the school bus in 2002, maybe 2003, and it’s playing on the radio, or something like it anyway, and maybe it’s a bit sunny, and I’m nodding along and probably thinking about girls and homework and how unfair everything is, and…
Sorry. Where was I?
Apparently, the number of girls who scrawled Tin Soldiers across their chests hit triple figures last year. Which, well. You know. Fair play. I didn’t realise that a sort of Feeder / Sum 41 crossbreed-type business was floating everybody’s boats. Maybe my finger isn’t as on the pulse as I thought. Or maybe, dear God, I’m actually getting old. No, surely not.
This review might seem a bit disjointed. It’s largely because I’m very ambivalent about this song. On the one hand, it does sound like the last eight or nine years didn’t happen. It also sounds a lot like Feeder and Sum 41. And it’s pop rock, a genre with which I have a rocky, semi-abusive relationship. But on the other hand, the production is good, with appealingly crunchy fuzz guitar and big drums, and it’s got a nice sort of catchiness to it. And although the singer really does sound loads like Grant Nicholas, I like Grant Nicholas. So you can almost pretend that you’re listening to Feeder, and that it’s not 2011, and everything isn’t disappearing rapidly down the toilet.
On that score, I think I’m going to let Tin Soldiers get away with it. Because they make me think I’m listening to Feeder in 2002. And all the ghastly stuff that’s happened since 2002 hasn’t happened. Obviously all the ghastly stuff that happened before 2002 did happen, but I’m fourteen years old in 2002, and therefore don’t care about anything that’s not me. So it’s fine.
I think.
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