Sometimes bands can go their whole career without writing two songs that sound entirely different. AC/DC have practically turned it into an art form. For some music fans, sameness just works. This is not the audience Best Boy Grip are aiming at with their second EP ‘The Clerk’. It contains only four songs, not one of which sound entirely like the other. The Derry based group revel in experimentation, frequently within the one track. This is almost a great thing, and would be if not for that fact that the result is somewhat flighty and unbalanced.
‘The Clerk’ opens with the song Postman – a light hearted pop song which hops around in several different directions, and is unfortunately weighed down with a plethora of lyrics that undermine the song’s simplicity. The title track comes next, and bounces jauntily off in a bunch of different directions, but is marred by similar problems.
It isn’t until the third track, Aim, that the talent behind Best Boy Grip really shines through. The song shows the band stepping into a more stripped back, raw, plaintive piano led sound, and this makes for the best moment on the EP. It’s like they’ve set the gimmicks and the quirky experimentation aside and just let the purity of the music shine through. The final track, Sun Lotion, falls back into the problems of the opening tracks. There are moments of brilliance, where the quirkiness of the melody and the lyrical inventiveness shine through, but there are other bands (like Bell X1 for instance) who can do this type of thing a lot more successfully.
Best Boy Grip have a lot to offer listeners, and the sheer variety of ‘The Clerk’ is admirable. There are many great musical moments, but pinning them down is a bit of a challenge.