Review Summary: British India perform, at best, admirably on their third studio effort.
In 2008 an Australia wide competition began, Triple J Unearthed High. Aimed at finding the best high school band, the incentive to win was a simple one. If you win you get a big, flashy concert alongside a big-time artist and a record deal as well. Enter British India, the “big-time” band the winners will play next to at their big, flashy concert. This has created a reasonable amount of hype to BI’s name; having a bunch of teenagers believe that it is an honour to play with you is something a lot of people take seriously. Their name (and subsequently glowing reviews to go along with it) is plastered all over the posters, advertisements and other various forms of promotion that Unearthed have used.
In the face of this, it seems prudent to consider just how much of this hype British India actually deserves. Nothing quite answers that question like comparing them to the artists that they’re supposed to be a god to. So let’s look at a random finalist and see how they match up to BI: Harry Ward, from Bundaberg Queensland. Whether or not this is surprising to you doesn’t matter, but Ward is more interesting, dynamic and talented then India. So that sets the stage for this album, an overhyped release that could easily be upstaged by the very people that are expected to worship it.
The main issue here is Declan Melia, the lead singer. He’s certainly unique, but not in a good way. His vocal melodies are often obscenely basic, rarely moving outside his comfortable range, which isn’t that pleasant in the first place. When he does move outside of it all he does is shout at the top of his lungs. This creates a polarizing but nonetheless bland style that is perfectly encapsulated in album opener “Safari”. Declan half mumbles his way through most of the 1:54 that “Safari” stays on for. Except when it comes to the chorus where he bellows the hook.
Actually, that song can probably be seen as a summary of a lot of what the band is about. The lead guitar performs a short, appreciable solo and introduces a decidedly tasty riff while the bass sits back (as is the norm for these kind of bands) virtually inaudible against the onslaught that the guitars create. The drums do what they do in almost every other song on the album, basic rhythms interspersed with rapid snare hits (I hope you like them, because there’s an abhorrent amount of them on
Avalanche).
After that the band f**k-up badly in “90 Ways To Leave Your Lover”, proving that they have no idea what they’re doing. They provide an excerpt from a speech by Richard Nixon’s vice-president, Spiro Agnew that has nothing to do with the song it’s attached to. The audio version of states:
“We seem to be entering an age of the gross. Persuasion through speeches and books is too often
discarded for disruptive demonstration, aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.”
The band decided to write down the speech and put it next to the lyrics, somehow managing to change that sentence and its meaning:
“Persuasion through speeches and books is too often
regarded as disruptive demonstration, aimed at bludgeoning the unconvinced into action.”
It’s a pathetic attempt at sounding intelligent, and helps add to the pile of garbage that is the beginning of the album up until “Friends”.
Friends’ hook isn’t much better then the previous 3, but it makes up for it with catchy verses and an interesting one-liner (“Together we’ll put a brick through this social windshield”). From there the band improve on their brand of pop garage rock with generally stronger cuts like “Vanilla”, which has enjoyable dual guitar work and personal lyrics. There isn’t much more to say about the rest of the album, as it never gets any better than that. It’s either equal to it (“Avalanche”), or slightly worse (“Messiah”). At least it never sinks back to the depth that “Safari” reached, that’s a very noticeable bonus.
It must be admitted that much of the album is designed to be fun and energetic, and it succeeds on that level. You can’t blame British India for appealing to their own age group and doing it relatively well. There are a few genuinely enjoyable songs, and so long as you skip the first few the rest of the album is at very worst tolerable. To be perfectly honest, all they really need to do is convince Melia to improve, or ditch him, either way the band can’t get any worse in that regard.
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