This is a 5 track EP from South Coast trio Three Summers Strong. It’s heavily American-influenced gruff indie punk, upbeat and easy going stuff. I played with these guys a while back when they opened up a show in Brighton (I think it was Bomb The Music Industry. Or maybe Mike Park) and they’ve come along a fair bit since then on the evidence of this release, ditching the acoustic for a more No Idea records style sound. At it’s best, a very good likeness to some of the tracks on Against Me!’s ‘Searching For a Former Clarity’.
The cynics among us would say there is a certain generica about proceedings – the vocals are maybe tainted a bit by the sheer amount of American bands this lot clearly listen to, because it doesn’t have a great deal of English identity. But the non-cynics would say ‘who gives a toss?’. These 5 tracks maybe betray a slight lack of variation, but these criticisms aside, I think this lot will keep coming on leaps and bounds and prove that indie punk/gruff (whatever you want to call it) can come from this fair isle in abundance.
Mike