You can blame Pavement. Or Weezer. Or any of those musicians who take an archly ironic view of the world and sound like they're looking down on you if you haven't at least got an A level in English. That's the sort of sound Radstewart peddle in and on this EP it juts comes across as a little too self centred.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. There is a shortage of indie type bands out there at the moment. At least you would think so until you checked out any festival line up and seen such non-entities as Two Door Cinema Club (and where the hell did they come from?) bringing in huge crowds. So on that note, Radstewart may just have it all.
But what about this EP? Is it any good? It's difficult to tell really. Musically it's all rather twee and insipid and that is before you get to the vocals. ‘Fix The Roads’ glides along with it's minor chords creating a jangly atmosphere whilst knowing lyrics about students and their lives regale us with oh so important facts that we may be privy to. It's not awful and strangely gripping.
‘Student Wiccans’ has some rather nice backing vocals going on which lift the song up and it all passes by in a nice mellow way whilst ‘Insane Parties’ manages to include the work “archipelago” in it's lyrics. An unusual touch but one that's instantly un-gratifying and annoying. Student life was never like this in reality, it was much more debaucherous.
If you like twee indie music with “smart” lyrics you will love this band. For everyone else they will be fairly inconsequential. Indie music used to offer so much and there are bands out there who are delivering this sort of stuff in a much better way – take Seazoo for example – Radstewart just offer a bad taste in the mouth.
