Stoke’s Friends of Ken have been around for 10 years and have never really set the world alight. They scooped a gig on Hollyoaks a year or two back and now this album is being distributed by Code 7, so there’s a good chance that we’ll be hearing more of them. That said, I find this record a little bit identity-less. When I last reviewed the band I found them to be like a weaker Lagwagon, and now they seem to have taken influence from slightlier rocky bands. It’s no bad thing, every band evolves and all that, but I just don’t ‘feel’ this album. It just sounds like a band playing songs…I don’t sense any passion and it doesn’t evoke too many emotions either. It’s not particularly bad, don’t get me wrong, and the likes of ‘Wilhelm Scream’ and ‘Backwards’ are pretty good songs. But they’re only good on their own – as a whole this album just plods along a bit aimlessly, lacking cohesion you’d expect to find from a band a decade old. There’s nothing that wrong with Friends of Ken, it’s just I can’t really find that much right with them either.
