Endrick Brothers - album review

POP ROCK

(Hypertension)

Wearing your heart on your sleeve has always sounded like a painful and messy sacrifice to me, while displaying your musical influences like a big clanging medal round the neck is nothing short of a grave mistake. So, within the first two-and-a-half minutes of opening track ‘Thorns on Every Rose’, the Endrick Brothers move inexplicably, tediously, predictably through the entire back catalogues of Neil Young and REM with a heavy nod in the direction of the Pernice Brothers. I’ll be amazed if ‘Irish Angel’ doesn’t result in a call from Stipe’s legal team, while ‘Dear Jane’ opens with the line: ‘I began to see the error of my ways’. Not quickly enough, unfortunately.