Review: Moving Brooklyn – Intervals [EP]

Moving Brooklyn seem like nice chaps. When you click onto their Facebook page, their header picture features them, being all smiley and flannel-shirted. Muted colours are abound throughout the bits of Facebook that you can customise, they list Celine Dion and cats (and dogs, because it’s unfair to discriminate) as their interests, and it all feels nice and cosy and safe.

Intervals is a very safe record, one that doesn’t take any big leaps or jumps into the stratosphere. Instead, it sticks to what it knows: pop-punk styled guitar picking, lyrics about pretty much nothing and the occasional, very tame, gang vocal section. And it does this for six whole tracks. It’s not that the record is bad – Moving Brooklyn can obviously play music – it just all sounds very similar. Moving Brooklyn also list their influences on their Facebook, and you can hear it all spilling out in there, just lacking the edge which made those influences great in the first place. Anberlin, Northstar, Taking Back Sunday… it’s all in Intervals, but it just doesn’t reach the lofty heights of those bands. Moving Brooklyn might have the potential to, but they need to take more risks.

The slick production of the EP doesn’t necessarily do them any favours either. Each song blends into one another with very little distinction. The only song that sounds vaguely different is closing track ‘Good Thing I’ve Learned’, which decides to step away from sunshine rhythms and instead, tries out a few minor chords. The verses feel like they’re building up to something, but as soon as the chorus comes back, it’s back to the same old, same old.

If I could describe Intervals in one word, it’d be “nice”. But sadly, nice just doesn’t cut it. Easily forgettable, Intervals bobs along in a sea of similar records, clutching onto its rubber ring and waving timidly at the shore.

2.5 out of 5 high fives!

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