Kids Near Water
“Hey Zeus!”
(Candlelight Records)
The English are way behind us on lots of things. The microwave, for one. Ketchup, for another. Kids Near Water is just the latest example of the UK being a day late and a buck short, as “Hey Zeus!” has all of the angular guitars and screamed lyrics of something coming out of the Midwest, only without much success. Still, it’s nice to see the whole indie-emo craze has made it across the Atlantic-a lot of those pictures of kids I see in London look like Spock Rockers anyway (except for that Price William [what a dreamboat]).
Anyway, Kids Near Water borrow quite a bit from Glasseater and Girls Against Boys in that their sound is mildly aggressive, albeit with more than a prudent amount of posturing. The bark achieved by say, Glasseater for example, never matures into anything more than a few whimpers on “Hey Zeus!”, due largely to the fact that the album changes direction so many times that anything resembling a collective whole has been shot to hell by track six. And let’s not mistake a lack of focus or theme for eclecticism, either. While bands like Hot Water Music or even Modest Mouse score points for adapting their sound to fit different genres, Kids Near Water is sitting on the fence of two distinct styles without doing either one justice.
