There’s nothing more exciting than reviewing an EP by some fellow fast food lovers, which may have swayed me to like Manchester pop-punk band Get Up Go a little more than it should. This review is probably now entirely biased and redundant as a result. Drummer, Ross, even has the band’s name on his bass drum skin mimicking the Burger King logo. I’ll have fries with that any day.
On to more serious matters. For obvious reasons, the third song on the EP (BK, Like OMG!) really stood out to me, and upon hearing it I immediately established it to be my favourite. Featuring an incredibly cool megaphone-esque section and some well placed double-bass drum bursts, the song weaves through standard, calm, and epic pop-punk sounds, with a massive outro deserving of an arena. I found this super interesting, it’s great to hear bands in genres like this doing interesting things with their sound and arrangements, as it’s not usually heard.
Bass player/vocalist Simon’s vocals really stood out, and were a refreshing change from the seemingly standard modern pop-punk nasal whines. It’s nice to hear some raspy, manly vocals in the genre, which added some real power and depth to the mix.
Something I would like to address is the lack of lead lines/guitar melodies. There’re two guitars and a bass in that band, and I often couldn’t pick out the difference between the guitars in terms of parts, tone and frequencies. Other than definitive sections with two obviously separate parts, it was genuinely hard to hear who was doing what, and it’d be nice to hear some more melodies, bigger, more open chords, or even noticably contrastic tones.
There also isn’t much dynamic to the EP, in terms of mixing/production, and it sounds super compressed in parts (which is definitely not the band’s fault!) Track one, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, is a solid tune, and has a chorus with potential to be really big, but when the full band kicks back in to the chorus after a dramatic stop, it is somewhat disappointing. Thankfully, this is something easily fixed live, but it would have been even better to have heard it right there in the track!
I’m super happy to be hearing some vocals that don’t sound like a crying teenager, and to finally have some catchy, traditional pop-punk vibes from a modern band. The songs are great, super catchy, well written and had me singing along after only a couple of plays. It’d be great to hear some obvious dynamic difference in the tracks, as well as more of that lead guitar! Maybe even a cheeky pop-punk solo, who knows?