Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing

by Tom Mendelsohn

We're sure someone still loves you, Someone Still Loves You...

"Really, this album is a perfect example of the rut in which creditable indie pop, especially that from America, finds itself."

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are a band more renowned for their distinctive name than anything else. They made a brief splash by appearing on an OC compilation record in 2006, and arguably garnered more recognition than their talents deserved due to their daft nomenclature. Shows the power of branding, though, doesn't it? Anyway, they turned out at the time to not totally suck, and they've managed to cling on long enough to release a second album. This one.

The first thing you notice is that the band’s music is as cutesy as its name, and even more wishy-washy. It's bright and breezy, though, and not an ugly listen by any means. It is, however, all very well being chirpy, sunny and all the rest, but 'Pershing' is so anaemic as to be entirely unmemorable; melding trite, throwaway melodies with lyrics built of the same flimsiness. It isn’t objectively bad, so much as obvious and a little bit lazy. The band are obviously talented songwriters, they're just sounding a bit fixated on enforced tweeness.

Really, this album is a perfect example of the rut in which creditable indie pop, especially that from America, finds itself. There isn’t a single new idea on display, here, just proficient-but-puny rehash. The same can be said of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Shins, The Earlies etcetera - and an argument could be made that guitar pop of this kind is dying on its ass before our very ears, as 6/10 after 6/10 record is released to critical and public disinterest. Sad, that.

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