What Now has had a long road to reach the debut of their first album in about a decade. After forming in South Africa in 2001, the band has endured a big move to London, breaking up, and finally getting back together to create new music. ‘Move Like A Sinner’ offers up a variety of genres sort of smashed up together, pitting new against old in this 13-track album.
There is an 80’s vibe throughout this album, starting with ‘Ready To Be Heard’ and continuing with ‘Money Maker’, ‘More Like A Sinner’, and others. The 80’s manifests itself in the vocals, in the old-school rock, and in the heavy use of synthesizers. The title track sounds like the intro to an 80’s action flick, using tons of electronic-based music as a background to build on with traditional instruments. The band does this often, and it usually works.
However, it gets a bit stale. This album has a clear formula. Almost every single track on ‘Move Like A Sinner’ starts off slow, with drawn out lyrics and a very punchy rhythm before breaking into a bit more up-tempo chorus. ‘Jackson’, ‘Animal’, and ‘Back to Blood’ along with those songs already mentioned, follow this formula. As you can imagine, this gets old very quickly. Every song starts sounding the same, and there are no surprises or unexpected twists.
Towards the middle, What Now decides to throw in some completely different songs. ‘Midnight Swimmers’ is clean, without effects and just a guitar and vocals. It quickly turns into a made-for-Christian-radio rock love song, with a decidedly Switchfoot-esque sound. ‘Wasting Away’ is purely electronic and adds more and more layers of sound as the song progresses and adds in some traditional instruments in the middle. It’s very slow and very unlike the rest of the album.
The jewel in the album comes with ‘High Class’, an indie-influenced track full of bass guitar, a super catchy chorus, and a beautiful harmony of dual vocalists. It has gritty effects that give it a vintage sound. It comes of as fresh, new, and fun and a complete change of pace for this album.
But therein lies the issue with ‘Move Like A Sinner’. The best track on the album sounds nothing like the rest. What Now battles with dated, repetitive rhythms and arrangements and combine these with trendy electronic sounds. There’s not much new or fresh here, and there’s a sense the band isn’t sure how they want to sound.
It’s musical confusion in 13 tracks, far too many for any album. With a bit more editing, this could have been a semi-cohesive album of alternative rock with a pop twist, but it ended up being a mess of different sounds from a band trying to do too much.
2.5/5
‘Move Like A Sinner’ by What Now is out now on Hey & Argh Records.
What Now links: Website|Facebook|Twitter
Words by Jenny Gagas
