There becomes a point where you have to move away from being a ‘promising UK pop-punk band’ and push the boundaries enough to forrage your own path. Knock away the strong influences and do your own thing. Become the band your earlier work promised you would be. The Honeymoon Suite promised a lot with their first batch of songs. With a strong vocalist who is easily the band’s biggest weapon, they pushed their way to the forefront of the UK pop-punk scene with a brand of Fall Out Boy-inspired pop-punk that did enough to get people singing along and inspire magazines and webzines to splatter adjectives their way.
Then they went a bit quiet. Momentum slightly lost, the band hope to make up for lost time with ‘Calm Your Little Passions’, a 3-tracker released on LAB Records. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a good little EP, but I don’t think it takes the band too many steps forward from where they were a year or so ago. The songs are good, but not really great. The vocals are even more Patrick Stmup-esque than ever and the tempo, for a pop-punk band, is, in my opinion, a little bit slower than it should be. It’s almost like the band are happy cruising along in third gear when a quick burst in fourth or even fifth would help them overtake the bands they’re currently neck and neck with. ‘I Wish I Wished You Well’ begs to be a bit quicker. The drums just need pushing that bit faster and the riffs that bit sharper. I was desperate to start the song again and cross my fingers it would somehow just get a bit quicker. Instead it all sounds a bit, well, pedestrian.
The title track is the strongest of the three and probably the song that doesn’t need the tempo injection. The vocals are great, the chorus is catchy and the band have nailed it. But the three songs as a whole are all the same tempo and I’d have loved for a bit of variety. I know the band have a lot of fans who read PT who will disagree with this review. But to be totally frank I expected a bit more. This EP is good, I must emphasise that, and in the title track they do have a song that could get some minor radio play. But I don’t think the band have capitalised on their vast potential and because of this, this is a little bit of a letdown.