Review Summary: If Fancy Blood was a person, he would be the kind of teenage boy a father approves of to take his daughter to the prom: sweet, romantic, earnest, bland, a little daft at times, but always perfectly adequate.
The dawn of the millenium, and subsequent meteoric rise of the Internet, gave birth to a whole new set of bands. Mostly made up of young people squarely in the "cyber-generation", these outfits utilized social platforms like MySpace to make themselves heard, posting new songs and sometimes entire albums in their profile pages. Pretty soon, this had turned into a whole scene unto itself - sometimes dubbed the "MySpace scene" - and forever shaped pages likes MySpace or Facebook, turning them from mere social networks to showrooms for young, hopeful unsigned bands.
Scarlet Grey fit the "MySpace scene" band profile to a T. They're young, fashionable, vaguely emo-ish, and their sound conforms to all that is "hip" within pop-rock music these days. To make them even more of a match to this new scene, the band is giving away their new six-song EP via their Facebook page, showing that they have a good grasp on the possibilities offered by online platforms. And, judging by the standard of what is offered here, this initiative should at the very least get them a few more fans.
Fancy Blood is, indeed, the epitome of the hip teenager's dream record. Over the course of its six songs. Scarlet Grey apply all the tropes that make up current radio-rock, mixing the riffage of pop-punk with the mellow sensibilities of emo and throwing in a few retro keyboards and electronic leanings typical of contemporary pop. The result comes out sounding more than a bit like the All-American Rejects, crossed with Fall Out Boy and sprinkled with dashes of Billy Talent and something like The Fray. And this mix, while flawed, ends up working well for the album's short duration.
The six songs on here can easily be divided into three equal groups: the standouts, comprised of opener
No Boys In The Ballroom and the cheese-topped
Naomi, the adequate songs - the title track and
The Sky And I - and the poorer moments, which include the annoying
Mr. Sinister - sadly not a cover of the Powerwolf song - and the harmlessly uninteresting
Business Colors. However, all three of these groups suffer from some common afflictions, of which the most serious is probably the occasionally laughable lyricism (
"this singer's much too young/this singer is me",
"this song is a smoke signal"). This problem is particularly grievous when a song like
Naomi, with its story of the preacher's daughter who chooses
"boys over Bethlehem", shows that the band can actually write a decent poem. Additionally, frontman Ben Grey seems split between the rebel inside him - evident whenever the guitar takes the forefront - and his more mellow side, reflected in his often overly sugary vocal work. It is this same vocal work that drags the album down a notch, as on occasion it sounds positively girly, such as when the singer utters some ridiculous high-pitched screams.
Still, the formula ends up working, even if it brings nothing new to the table. Everything about this album is derivative: the electronic percussion brings to mind the All American Rejects, all while Grey's vocal tone and the frequent, moderately heavy staccato passages reek of Fall Out Boy and the guitar tone and gang choruses clearly aspire to be in a Billy Talent album. And yet, out of this hodgepodge of stolen elements and ideas comes something that, while by no means groundbreaking or even durable, nevertheless registers as quite enjoyable. In practical terms, if
Fancy Blood was a person, he would be the kind of teenage boy a father approves of to take his daughter to the prom: sweet, romantic, earnest, bland, a little daft at times, but always perfectly adequate. A rebel simmers inside him, yet it is systematically quenched by the good-boy side which inevitably surfaces. And while letting your inner rebel out is not always a good thing when you're a teenage boy, it certainly helps when you're in a quote-unquote "rock" band. Here's hoping Scarlet Grey will let theirs out, as it is all that's missing for them to be more than just a fairly good band.
Recommended Tracks
No Boys In The Ballroom
Naomi
Download it officially and for FREE here:http://www.facebook.com/scarletgreyrock?v=app_178091127385 (just "like" the band to download)
