Theme Park: No Talking, No Head

Some day, possibly soon, we’re going to run out of truly new bands.

We’ll have exhausted every new sound, vocal cadence, effects pedal configuration, way to hold the microphone, style of bass playing, every length of guitar strap, every variation of, “We do what we do and if anyone else likes it, that’s a bonus”, every gloomy pose pulled for every tired NME photographer.

It’s already happening: bands are spinning in ever tighter, centrifugally, circling back to ever more-recent source material. Dubstep is only a small stumble away from discombobulating into Trip Hop.

Theme Park sound a lot like Talking Heads. Let’s not beat around the bush. But Elastica sounded like Wire and Oasis sounded like – well, pretty much every band that Noel Gallagher listened to when he was growing up. It never did them any harm.

So the fact that Theme Park’s sound is one you might have heard before is relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I’m not being glib. Who cares if the song is good? No-one cared that Braque’s paintings were virtually identical to Picasso’s.

Perhaps there is, indeed, a wider issue to address here. An investigation into what drives bands to shape their sound just so would be a worthy one, but why bother when a song as hopelessly, endlessly fun as Milk is skittering and juddering along?

Milk is so precisely assembled that it almost hurts, and maybe we’d feel the pain if it wasn’t for the subsequent delight that such an upbeat, dizzying song delivers to your ears; laser-precise and fluorescent.

Peaking with chiming highs and bouncing along on a tumbling bass, Milk is a small joy. If this is what the future holds, I’m happy.

MORE: themeparkband.com // soundcloud.com/themepark

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