Five O'Clock Heroes
Bend to the Breaks

I have always hated bands that take their name from a song by their favorite band, that mimic the sound of their favorite band, that dress like their favorite band did when they played, in the years when they got their lunch money stolen during recess by kids who are now construction workers. They have this young bourgeois MTV aura, these bands, all style, sunglasses, and a life full of yeah.

The favorite band of these Five O'Clock Heroes is the Jam. Their name comes from the Jam. They sound like the Jam. They dress like in the times of the Jam. Almost certainly, looking at their faces, they got their lunch money stolen. Yet I don't hate the Five O'Clock Heroes. I've been listening to these Anglo-Americans for a while, and I immediately took a liking to them, without ever understanding why. Maybe because nobody cares about them, because their former construction worker classmates make more money than they do, because I see them sipping a tamarind slush at the bar under the house, sitting in those chairs with colorful elastic strings.

And yet, I want to say: these Five O'Clock Heroes have zero originality, they sound like a mix of the Clash and the Strokes, they seem to have a musical technique comparable to my eight-year-old cousin's, they pile up elementary electric guitar riffs, primitive bass and drums, verse-chorus and go, according to the pop-rock manual. Sure, Ellis's voice is lively and cheerful, the rhythm is always very upbeat, "Anybody Home" sounds like a Madness record, the atmospheres are of sky-blue Lambrettas and brick-colored buildings. Some tracks are a bit Weezer-like. "Time On My Hands", "Head Games", "Run To Her", "Skin Deep" are a burst of fast and intriguing melodies. The songs resemble each other, but they could all be great little singles to liven up the discorock floors.

It's music that makes you feel a bit cool, a bit like "this afternoon I'm going out, picking up some girls and heading to the beach". "White Girls" is a colorful variation around an elementary riff; "Corporate Boys", laid-back and summery, is there to tease the nerds who stay in the city. Yet it's a kind of coolness that tastes a bit of proletarian, of out-of-fashion t-shirts and Tassoni, of kicking a ball even if you're not that good.

With a little more care, this light and unpretentious album could have become an even interesting work. But who knows, maybe then I would have started to hate the Five O'Clock Heroes and their fashion t-shirts, their somewhat cunning sound, their little tricks to gather three more groupies than the Kaiser Chiefs. Instead, by now, I've resigned myself to keeping this band and this album in good favor, recommending it, listening to it when a more carefree sun than usual comes out, keeping it in my collection knowing that it will age soon, in the hope that it will age a bit in my place and give me some crumbs of its brazen ease.