Album Review: FRND CRCL – Internet Noise

Take your chances on being challengingly original, or try to fit comfortably into a genre? FRND CRCL have opted for the latter. As opening track Somethin’ Bout You rang out, I had a sudden and vivid mental picture of some larky young gentlemen in board shorts, so I looked them up. I was not disappointed. Or wrong.

I’m sure that FRND CRCL from New Jersey (we have to talk about that lack of vowels, chaps, you’re not Welsh) are recycling the Charlotte Blink Mouth catalogue in a loving, non-cynical and affectionate way, but I’m struggling to find the defining feature that would take this album and lift it from being more of the same and make it great. Maybe playing to your strengths is the path of least resistance. And there are considerable strengths on display here. There is plenty of musicality and I’m sure the lyrical content is considered and clever but at the end of it all, this is an album of, sadly, generic … what is it? Emo-power-pop? Nu-metal-punk-rap?

The songs are great, there is the requisite and perfect mix of self-reflection and power. There are moments of thundering beauty and, very occasionally, quiet eloquence. All the ingredients are right. At the end of it all though, the time and effort expended getting all those ingredients just right only ends up with a store-bought cake.

Make no mistake, FRND CRCL do everything right. The trouble is that what they’re doing right has been done before, and better. Wistful, melancholic and jaded young men with guitars will be amongst us for the foreseeable future and Internet Noise is not a bad album. The single Famous has a nice sarcastic Busted vibe going on. And that’s the problem. These guys are a mirror when I wanted a window.

Internet Noise by FRND CRCL can be streamed via digital service providers here