‘Move Like a Sinner’ is the latest offering from South African rock trio What Now. The band grew up in Ballito, a little town by the beach, and later re-located to the UK to – in their own words – “get big”. The end result is thirteen tracks of well-produced but fairly middle of the road electronic rock.
The opening track ‘Money Maker’ offers up some palatable classic rock riffage along with vocal melodies that come straight out the Black Keys or Jack Black catalogue. It’s an odd move to then go from that roots feel into the next track ‘If Looks Could Kill’ with its churlish synth and distanced drum rolls you’d expect to hear on a FIFA soundtrack.
It would be interesting to see What Now in a live environment. They have a curiously big sound for a trio. Take the maxed out reverb on ‘Jackson’ or the string section or in ‘Wasting Away’ a song which begins with the delicate touch of death cab for cutie and ends sounding like the clichéd pop rock of The Feeling or Maroon 5. Tracks like ‘High Class’ and ‘I want my Blood’ lack any real hooks, either that or they are so buried in effects that they don’t serve their purpose. If only they would remove some of the unnecessary fancies, then they might make some kind of a connection to listeners but unfortunately there’s no identity to be found in the songs – just faceless lyrics that would be better suited to pop music for their lack of insight into in the human condition.
The trio experiment with so many styles that it’s particularly hard to figure out exactly what they are trying to do. Their mash up of different styles sounds confused and isn’t interesting enough to leave any kind of lasting impression, they are clearly all enthusiastic, talented musicians but ‘Move Like a Sinner’ leaves you with the feeling they aren’t all pulling in the same direction, yet.
CHRIS COLESHAW