Allow me, for a moment, dear reader, to break the fourth wall. Whilst I remain enamoured of the spectrum of music we cover at Already Heard, I do feel that sometimes we may be a little myopic. As an intensely lazy man, I get a fair amount of my musical recommendations from this site and others like it; it keeps me abreast of the latest big things in punk, emo and hardcore, but I have no idea what’s going on in major label “indie rock” these days. Are Peace a thing? Were Peace a thing? Were they just a horrible dream I had? What’s a Haim? These questions and more plague me – at least back in 2006, in the glory days of “landfill indie” I could separate a Jack Peñate from a Larrikin Love, yet in 2014 I am only vaguely aware there’s a band called Bastille that have sold about a gazillion records. However, when listening to Buckinghamshire-based quartet Big Sixes, I realise that ignorance is bliss and the grass is far greener in my little esoteric musical bubble.
It’s obvious how Big Sixes have come to be Sony Music’s next big hope – they’re young, inoffensive and nice-looking gentlemen, but to someone who treasures inventiveness, creativity and integrity above all else in music, it’s not immediately apparent why this might be popular. Sure it’s palatable, but by god it’s bland. The singer has one of those odd hiccupy, gulpy voices you hear a lot on daytime radio; pleasant enough, but ultimately colourless and limpid. The five tracks present on début EP ‘The Idles’ pass by without any real event. I’m sure there are some out there that could pick this out of an identity parade, but the whole record leaves me as cold as standing in a field half a mile away from Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
Call me jaded, call me cynical, call me ignorant but this is as dull, plodding and destinationless as 90% of the other vanilla, white bread mediocrity major labels stuff down the throat of impressionable teens and adults alike that think this represents “guitar music” – don’t even get me started on Royal fucking Blood. I could stand tall on my soapbox for far longer, but I shan’t bore you any longer in a review that can be neatly surmised by simply stating that Big Sixes are the musical equivalent of a Wetherspoons date on a rainy Tuesday in Bracknell – it’s not completely awful, but it’s sure as hell tedious. I remain doubtless that the PR and marketing machine behind this band will roll on regardless and they’ll probably end up huge (if you purposefully mispronounce their name a little, it sounds like “Big Success” – I am splitting my sides), leaving my dissenting voice sounding as ridiculous as ever, but there’s simply nothing redeemable I’m able to say about this EP. Big Sixes? Bit Sexless, more like.
1/5
‘The Idles’ EP by Big Sixes is out now on RED UK.
Big Sixes links: Website|Facebook|Twitter
Words by Ollie Connors (@olliexcore)
