Pitty Sing Pitty Sing

All the right features in all the right places, but you just don't do it for me luv. We've all thought this, and, on occasion checked ourselves before saying it to someone. Well, Pitty Sing's debut is a bit like that. Nothing offensive about it, it's just that there's nothing particularly striking either. While we're on the subject, You just don't do it for me Luv could easily be a Pitty Sing track.

Four more New Yorkers with the requisite guitars, drums and symphony orchestra making music that The Smiths et al were making twenty years ago, better. A glance at their website lets us know that frontman Paul Holmes not only eschews these influences, but throws all his toys out of the pram at such comparisons; all we can say is, he shouldn't have made songs that sound like them then, should he? Incidentally, this isn't a slur on The Smiths et al, they were making innovative albums in a unique style at a time when it sounded fresh and exciting: this poor simulacrum doesn't.

Still, let's give the man a chance to defend himself: "We were doing these big, epic journeys through pop and electronic, real long and emotional [sic]... and I was like, 'there's no way just anybody could do this. This must be something special'". They're not, they demonstrably can, and it's not. In fact, that could be a track name too - we might have a crack at this malarkey ourselves. And between us we can just about master an ocarina.

This conceit aside, the band's goal is to make "memorable melodies" and in this at least, they succeed. Bleeding hearts, we're on drugs and ctwyl are all tunes that after one listening you will find yourself singing in the shower, if only because the shower head lends itself very well to a Morrissey impression. And as shower antics go, it's safer than Elvis. The aforementioned three in particular are eminently catchy even if they lack the spark to make them stand out beyond the parameters of this record. But, hey, if you like the sort of tunes that turn up on the jukebox at ten past eleven, who's sole purpose is to stir sluggish, beer-sodden sentiment, then you might find something to like here.

Perhaps Pitty Sing are in this for the sex, drugs and lucre; we hope so and good luck to them. But if it's musical integrity they're after this isn't a promising start. As for taking a smattering of lyrics from each song and running them together as pseudo-poetry in your inlay card, 'fraid Nirvana got there first, boys. This is indicative of Pitty Sing: a handful of good ideas but none of them executed with any novelty.