‘Between Here and There’ is the twelve track debut album from the Hertfordshire based band that is Look See Proof. The album has seen its release through Weekender Records, and what we have here with Look See Proof is yet another Futureheads style post-punk revival/indie rock band. The band’s sound hints at a number of different bands such as Bloc Party, The Rapture, and of course the aforementioned Futureheads. This is not a particularly bad album, it’s incredibly unoriginal though and everything that has been accomplished by Look See Proof here has already been done better by others. The album is bland and treads no new ground whatsoever; the music of Look See Proof will no doubt be liked by many, it’s the commercial post-punk revival sound that a lot of bands are popularly producing at the moment; it doesn’t make the music any more original or exciting though and commercial success is by no means a measure of innovation.
The album begins with ‘You Don’t Get It’, a fairly interesting track with a decent enough chorus to boot. Were this album released a few years back then the band’s sound would probably be more exciting; as the genre has been done to death already though the music therefore lacks edge, energy, and excitement. As the album progresses the tracks have a horrible knack for blending together into one and never can you quite tell where one ends and the next begins. All twelve tracks sound incredibly similar and throughout all of them I’d say that the band that Look See Proof sounds most like here is most definitely The Futureheads. Half of the tracks present here do in fact sound like absolute carbon copies of The Futureheads music; no marks whatsoever for originality then and marks deducted in fact for pure bandwagon jumping factor.
The further you get through this album the less exciting the choruses begin to get. For a few tracks the choruses are quite catchy and you almost find yourself singing along; after a while you begin to notice that every track has the exact same echo effect in the chorus however and that there’s no telling the tracks apart even by their choruses. It’s a very irritating factor here that Look See Proof shows no obvious signs of any actual talent as a band; every quality of the music is stolen from others and every guitar riff, every vocal melody, and every drumbeat also; all is taken directly from the music of others. Look See Proof is not a bad band, as a Futureheads cover act I can imagine that they’d be brilliant; rehashing other people’s ideas is a lot less difficult to do and far less impressive however than creating music that is actually a little innovative and original.
Full credit must go to Look See Proof though for including at least one track that doesn’t sound like the musical lovechild of Bloc Party and The Futureheads. ‘Bishopsgate’ sound nothing like either of these bands; oh no, the band instead here chooses to take a little inspiration from Pete Doherty; brilliant. The track is dreadful and the bands singing of ‘I don’t wanna pay the rent’ in the chorus is completely out of tune. It’s painful to listen to and you have to wonder why the record label didn’t save the artist a little embarrassment here by using auto-tune; the track sounds rough and the vocals are completely dire. It’s a definite low point for the album and why the band/record label saw it fit to include this one I just don’t really know.
Closing track ‘Start Again’ is perhaps one of the better efforts from this album; it’s still very unoriginal but does work out quite well for Look See Proof here in that the track is reasonably interesting and exciting to listen to. It is as ever very Futureheads in its nature and if you like the music of The Futureheads then you’ll probably like this track as well. Despite this being my favourite Look See Proof attempt from this album I’d still rather listen to The Futureheads though; why accept an imitation when you can listen to the real thing.
If you listen to a lot of post-punk revival music then you may well find the time in your day to listen to Look See Proof; if however you’re looking for something a little new and different from the norm then Look See Proof is not the band to provide you with this. The Futureheads2 would be a much more apt name for the band than Look See Proof; perhaps the band could change their name to something like ‘Look and listen to See Proof that we sound exactly like The Futureheads’ in fact, or perhaps that’s already what the band’s name is short for anyway. Some of the music is fairly interesting here and this is not a terrible album; it’s very unoriginal though and it’s therefore difficult to listen without having that niggling annoyance in the back of your mind about the lack of creative innovation displayed by Look See Proof and the copycat nature of the band’s music. It’s all very well to take influence from other artists but to try and mimic their sound exactly is just taking it a step too far; Look See Proof is yet another sound-alike post-punk revival band and for most it’s probably for the best to avoid this ‘Between Here and There’ album.
Label: Weekender Records
Release Date: June 2nd 2008
Rating:
UK based film graduate with a huge passion for music, sports and video games.