Small Talk

Album Review

With rumors of a Busted reunion being firmly denied, the Jonas Brothers focusing on their solo careers and McFly working with Taio Cruz, there suddenly appeared to be a gap in the market for a group of teen-friendly punk-pop pin-ups. Step forward Cambridge trio Twenty Twenty. Not to be confused with the Californian power pop band of the late '70s, brothers Sam and Jack Halliday and Sonny Watson-Lang may have opted for the D.I.Y. indie-label approach with their early EPs, and appeared as Video of the Week on Kerrang! TV, but with their sweeping Justin Bieber-style haircuts and recent support slots with pure pop idols Selena Gomez, the Saturdays, and the Wanted, it's unlikely that their anthemic, feel-good, blink-182-lite sound will be embraced by many people outside of their obvious teenage girl demographic. But produced by Julian Emery and co-written with Guy Chambers and Steve Robson (all of whom have had experience of working with McFly, Busted, or the Jonas Brothers), their Geffen-released mini album, Small Talk, shows that what they lack in credibility, they make up for in anthemic killer choruses. Opening track "Love to Life" is one of the most infectious singles you'll hear all year, thanks to its All-American Rejects-esque melodies, bombastic singalong chanting, and '80-tinged chugging guitars. Elsewhere, "Get Down" echoes the youthful emo-pop of Boys Like Girls, "Love's a Freak" is the kind of driving college rock you'd hear on the soundtrack to an early-noughties gross-out movie, while "Burning Up," not a Jonas Brothers cover, is an addictive slice of turbo-charged new wave which could be mistaken for the latest All Time Low single. However, the trio's constant fixation with the "you rock my world" themes of teenage lust begins to wear a bit thin, as does their tendency to sing in a faux-American accent, which suggests that they might have a few problems when it comes to recording a full-length album; only the string-soaked emotive ballad "The Puppeteer" really deviates from their relentlessly upbeat skate-punk sound. Separate the wheat from the chaff and you'd have a pretty solid EP, but Small Talk's overall lack of maturity and progression means it's too early to determine whether they'll be the next Fall Out Boy or the next Noise Next Door. ~ Jon O'Brien, Rovi