Uninspiring and dull. Trying hard to be different, but pulling up short of being special...
Earnest, honest, true-grit songwriters from Sheffield: a band called the Arctic Monkeys. But these guys are from Sheffield too and don't follow in the footsteps of Pulp and the Monkeys, they deign to be different. Arty and farty and trying had to originate the new perspective, but only managing to produce a laboured and stretched debut record with few highlights.
'Maximum' has a nice poppy feel to it, a good slow track, a song that should be a rarity on a record, but in fact they all sound like this. The thing that makes 'Maximum' stand out is that it utilises a nicer tune than the rest and almost rocks out a bit at the end.
Think of the Kaiser Chiefs with their annoying, gimmicky vocal bits, 'ohhhhllllllll' and take away the guitars and rampant drums and you've got Champion Kickboxer. Trying to make a choir out of straining voices behind a lead vocal. By the time 'Like Him + Her + Her + Me' comes in you're sick of it and want to shoot yourself in the face. You start off at the beginning of the record thinking 'it's ok, a bit quirky, a bit different'; you end up bored out of your skull and very surprised that none of the songs actually clock in at over five minutes. They seem like they do.
'Language' has a bit of screaming in it, sounding pretty lacklustre, and 'Thinking' has a pseudo-progressive pattern that doesn't turn you on. They're trying to be very left of centre and yet there's not enough going on to warrant any interest, they try to be artistic and minimalist, but end up just sounding empty and really uninspiring.
You get a sense of where it's come from and what it's trying to achieve and both are commendable, but the outcome is realistically a record that won't sell. Only 35 minutes of music, but it sounds like you've just listened to a double album from some shocking 70's prog-rock band like the Mahavishnu Orchestra. 'Exhaustion Rules' at the end is the final exhaustive piece on the album and as that comes to a close you rush out into life rapturously sucking at the air and thanking the Lord for not having to sit through hours upon hours of that. Maybe that's going too far... it's alright, nothing more, simply nothing more.
It ends on such a note of nothingness that you don't even notice it go, by that point you've either gone somewhere else, gone to sleep or just zoned out... it really is not attention-grabbing and that is something any music needs to be, whether its trying to be different, cool, arty, out-there, or anything else. A few good ideas, little more, a letdown really.