Ladies and gentlemen, welcome in the new The Academy Is… record. Oh, wait. This isn’t the new The Academy Is… record, is it? It may as well be – the appalling named Cute Is What We Aim For sound exactly like that. Actually, can UK readers remember S Club 7 and S Club Juniors? Well if you can, the difference between CIWWAF and TAI is the same as the brightly coloured poplets from several years ago. In essence, it’s a bunch of young kids singing TAI b-sides – you can almost even picture William Beckett’s pelvic thrusting as you listen to this record. Right from the song structures through to the attempted lyrical wit and style, there are a lot of similarities here.
But before I go into discussing the album, I want to briefly comment on the name. What’s worse – The Soundtrack to my Bleeding Heart in Autumn, or Cute Is What We Aim For? I know it’s a suitable name – CIWWAF are ‘cute’ after all – but both are equally as horrible in my opinion…
Anyway, ‘Same Old Blood Rush’. So yeah, they sound like The Academy Is… and, if you like Fueled By Ramen and their legions of hit-selling bands, here’s another band to add to your myspace lists. There are plenty of melodies, plenty of jaunty guitar parts and lyrics that could come straight from a teenager’s blog. It ticks all the checkmarks of a successful release of this type, it’s just very familiar and very much a case of heard-it-all-before. There are a couple of fun songs on here – ‘There’s A Class For This’ and ‘Sweat The Battle’ stand out – and it is all nicey-nice, but it’s just all been done, and heard, before.
Just like Drive Thru Records were pinned with the ‘Drive Thru sound’ back in 2001/2, this is the record which will pin Fueled By Ramen to the FBR sound…whether that’s fair or not is entirely up to you. CIWWAF are cute, but what they aim for isn’t really completely whetting my apetite.
www.myspace.com/cuteiswhatweaimfor
Fueled By Ramen
paul