Pump Up The Valium
Air Hammers' latest single is a curious affair delving into various styles that is ultimately rather confusing!
The A-side is 'My Sweetheart', a real crooner's song complete with accompanying trumpets, unfortunately to pull this type of song off with aplomb it really needs the vocals to have the tried and tested sound of an old style crooner - this doesn't! It's lyrically cringe worthy ('My Sweetheart, my bunny') and the only possible value to it would be if it were firmly tongue in cheek but even then it's not bad enough to be amusing.
The b-side promises more with 'It's Not My Fault', a far more entertaining listen and being quite fast it leans more toward the quirky indie style of bands like 'Space'. There are some nice keyboard touches and it's a well structured song but the vocals still grate somewhat. However it's more representative of their usual style and should really have been the a–side.
The final track 'Who Am I Then' is a pastiche country number and the only words that spring to mind are quite awful. This really is completely throwaway beyond getting really drunk and dancing to it at a wedding with your gran.
It's really not clear what Air Hammer hoped to achieve with this release, it's a total mish mash of styles that lurches between the downright awful and the rather interesting. On this evidence it's questionable how serious Air Hammer are, either way it sounds like they need to narrow the gap between their musical styles. It's a shame that this release could be the only thing some people hear as a quick listen to the album sampler on their website shows they are much, much better than this release suggests.