Document Actions
The Boat People - Chandeliers
2/5
Words: Rob Sampson
Brisbane beat combo The Boat People proudly display their influences on their sleeves, with the pop sensibilities of The Beatles and Crowded House blasting through this album, as well as sounding a bit like a more commercial version of Oz pop contemporaries The Go-Betweens and The Lucksmiths.
The band does have an intelligent ear for a melody and arrangements but their attempts at clever lyric writing doesn’t always work.
However, Awkward Orchid Orchard is a fantastic song, starting off sounding like a Field Music tune, and Light Of Love is an energetic pop song. But elsewhere, Tell Someone Who Cares and On Your Side are basically just Crowded House by numbers, whilst Panic somehow apes a modern pop-rock band like The Wombats.
The Boat People are a decent enough band, but there’s nothing on this album that jumps out at you and smacks you in the face to demand your attention. They don’t really take their pop song formula anywhere exciting, preferring to stick to the basic rules of their obvious influences. There’s countless bands doing a similar schtick to this and doing it better, so it will take something more exceptional on their next album to keep my interest.
Released: 10.11.08
You can pick up your copy of NARC from almost every music venue in the region as well as record shops, pubs and selected shops. For the full list see OUTLETS in the left panel
