Talk about a mixed bag – ‘Beneath It All’ goes from the sublime pop-punk of ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’ to the radio rock dirge of ‘Hangover’ in the space of one simple three second gap between songs. And it, sadly, sums up Hey Monday a treat. They’re so wildly inconsistent they’re always going to be in Paramore‘s shadow. No matter how much this band has become Cassadee Pope and her backing band, until the band can write (whether it be on their own or with other songwriters) consistently good songs, this lot ain’t gonna hit the heady heights the marketing team would like them to.
Let’s take things back slightly. This record started life as an album and then, seemingly overnight, became an EP. It’s not hard to see why. There’s only two good songs here – the opening ‘Wish You Were Here’ and the aforementioned first single. The rest is sappy, slow and dirgey. Cassadee gets to push her vocal range on ‘Mr Pushover’ but it takes way too long to get going and the refrain just isn’t solid enough. The band are by far at their best when they push the pace along a bit, so ‘Where Is My Head’ is passable, but in truth that’s being generous.
‘Beneath It All’ leaves me with the impression this band just aren’t as good as they should be. A crack songwriting team helped to pen this record and the songs, on the whole, are left wanting. When the band are upbeat and energetic they’re quite fun, but only half of this EP has any kind of uplifting pace meaning it just drifts along far too often. It’s simply dull in places. Hey Monday are simply Taylor Swift marketed at pop-punk kids. I don’t think they’d deny it if you put it to them, but this EP just lacks a bit of passion and honesty for me.