There has been a considerable amount of hype surrounding Auckland’s brother-sister duo, Broods. Their single ‘Bridges’ pricked up ears around the world, and with Lorde’s producer behind their debut EP, expectations are high.
While there is plenty of promise, the release lacks subtlety and sentiment.
Broods starts off in tremendous fashion with ‘Never Gonna Change’. Its glitchy, electronic drum patterns and multi-layered vocal melody is the right balance of light and dark pop sounds.
Unfortunately, the opening track is followed by five songs that exhaust the same digital techniques and song structures.
It seems like producer Joel Little is trying to combine the sounds of New Zealand’s two most successful exports in recent memory, Lorde and The Naked And Famous, to push forward the recent pop resurgence in the land of the long white cloud.
In short, the EP seems to lack identity. Together, the six tracks are a battering of electronic drums, auto-tuned vocals, and loud synthesisers. This formulaic structure is predictable and somewhat unstimulating.
In isolation, the songs are brilliantly catchy. One can almost see the camera phones and ‘clap-alongs’ started by festival revellers, and their will to succeed may mean that they are putting all their faith in the in-vogue producer. However, let’s hope that by the time they release their debut LP in mid 2014, the duo will display a collection that more strongly defines who they are.
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Listen to ‘Never Gonna Change’ from Broods here:
