Every once in a while a band comes along with a bag full of irresistible songs that are too frustratingly good. So annoying is this that you spend ages trying to find a hole in their work, something you can pick apart, something with which you can shoot them down in flames with. In the case of Scouting For Girls’ self titled debut, there are no such obvious holes and if there were they’d probably tie a reef knot around it faster than you could give them a three fingered salute. The band name is a cheeky take on Baden Powell’s book Scouting for Boys; the original scouting handbook for instruction in good citizenship. And like the book, the album inspires a sense of Beach Boy esque nostalgia, with talk of girls, love, and staying out (not too late mind) with your mates.
There is no binge drinking badge to be gained from listening to this album, but you will be reminded of how good it is to be young and of promising to do your best before the older boys from the Rover Scout’s get hold of you or a girl from the Ranger Guide’s (that’s what they’re called these days!) takes your fancy. In short, it’s clean and clinical but the fact that it’s the opposite colour to that of Pete Doherty’s fingernails shouldn’t put you off. If you like formulaic, charmingly buoyant, infectious piano powered pop (like the world needs any more) then ‘Scouting For Girls’ is definitely for you. But that’s just the point, the world probably doesn’t need anymore and if it did, it better be damn good. Luckily for Scouting For Girls they are rather good at barefaced piano pop, but that doesn’t mean that the album will automatically stand up for itself as well as a two-man bivouac in a wet Welsh forest.
Painting adolescent indie pop by numbers, the album kicks off with ‘Keep On Walking’ and right from the start you know you’re about to be subjected to a heavy coating of ivory chords, harmonized whoa’s and wha’s and a general sense of feel good tweeness. The likes of ‘Heartbeat’ and ‘I Need A Holiday’ are extremely similar in design, but to the bands credit they’re definitely on a par with their peers and above the national average. There are a few hidden gems that shine out amongst this ten song happy go lucky collection, in particular ‘She’s So Lovely’, their upbeat take on the growing pains of young starry eyed love, which no doubt harks back to when they were young cubs and could think of nothing else but Beaver. Unfortunately the rest of the album treads too much of a well trodden and irritatingly circular path. Piano, bass and vocal are so infuriatingly comparable and stalk each other more closely than Richard Ramirez ever could.
As a result and regardless of how good the individual songs are as standalone tracks, the likes of ‘It’s Not About You’, ‘The Airplane Song’, ‘Elvis Ain’t Dead’, ‘I’m Not Over You’ and ‘The Mountains Of Navaho’ bleed endlessly into one another and it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, such is the lack of variation. Frighteningly feeble in parts, emotionally lacking and overcooked at the same time in others, by the time ‘James Bond’ and its seven minutes of paralleled over indulgence brings the album to a close, you find yourself too emotionally drained and even brainwashed to care. It’s a shame because you can’t actually fault the music, but it’s all been done a few too many times before to make the impact it otherwise would have done.
