Standard Fare Out Of Sight, Out Of Town

If you’re a cynical, merciless music reviewer like myself, the name ‘Standard Fare’ is the kind of thing that’ll have you wringing your hands with smug glee. Better still, the PR blurb describes them as an ‘indie-pop power trio’, which brings to mind Busted, McFly and crying young girls (or is that just me?). This one could have been so much fun.

 

Alas, Standard Fare aren’t so bad. While this is far from groundbreaking stuff, Out Of Sight, Out Of Town - which shall henceforth be known as OOS, OOT! - has a few enjoyable moments. A frequent highlight is Emily Kupa’s voice, which boasts wicked range. Tonally she has a kind of girl-next-door plainness, which actually compliments the band’s pop-punky aesthetic pretty well, and sounds a great deal less pretentious than the shouty-yelpy likes of the Ting Tings and other such trendy-fodder.

 

And they have a few good tunes, too - when they use their imagination. Suitcase paints a faintly amusing picture of preparing for a nuclear apocalypse (“I’ve been digging, got a bunker in my back yard / Filled with tins and dried fruit, I’m gonna survive the fallout”), while Older Women deals with an issue that is not discussed nearly often enough in music: MILFs (the pursuit thereof, to be precise).

 

But at the same time, much of the subject matter is nothing short of inane. There’s something really quite tedious about lines like “If I had strength I wouldn’t take advantage / If I knew better I wouldn’t take you” (Looking for Lust). Dead Future, meanwhile, is a clichéd whinge about the tedium of the 9-5 grind (“Why do we give our lives to these day jobs that we’ve never loved?” - which is a) a stupid question, and b) the kind of thing you really don’t want to hear when you’re kicking back after work). And the male-female vocal rounds are just a little bit - well - Alphabeat. It’s these tracks that deal a fatal blow to an album that is fundamentally pretty samey - a jaunty, power-chord style that was all the rage ten years ago, but nowadays feels tired.