Songs beginning with droning one note guitars: check. Obligatory smoke machine rendering band mere silhouettes on stage: you bet. Vocalist singing with Sonic Boom’s ‘can’t really give a fuck” tuning skills while leaning over his microphone so he can see his boots better: uh-huh. Welcome to the world of shoegazing, 21st century style. Hold on. Doesn’t that song start just like a Chapterhouse song? I think it does. Isn’t that the same ‘glide guitar’ sound that Kevin Shields made his own? It just might be. Could that be the sound of an early Ride single? Hell, don’t ask me, but it certainly sounds familiar. (Could it be the janitor? Could be. Oh, shit. That was Hong Kong Fooey.) Simon Says No have clearly studied their homework very, very carefully indeed, so carefully that they even raise the ghost of shoegazing outsiders, Loop, but therein lies the rub: this is shoegazing 20th century style. All the right musical themes are in place but there’s little new here, little that isn’t instantly identifiable. When they pick up the pace on “Give Me Good Vibrations” they threaten to take off, as they do again at the show’s close, but they need to find a way of doing more than replicating – albeit very well indeed – their heroes. Perhaps they should spend a little more time gazing at the stars rather than their feet.
(Reviewed at Sub Scene)
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