After undergoing what can only be described as drastic-sonic plastic surgery earlier this year, I couldn’t help but feel that Blanketman had lost a lot of the charm that had first got me interested in them. Trading songs about cricket and the monotony of the working week for a song like ‘Taking You With Me’ really does unapologetically come across as a big effort to write more middle of the road, accessible music. Add this to the fact they removed all their older songs off of Spotify and soon a picture starts to be painted of a band that has, so early in their career, lost sight of what made them unique and intriguing.
‘Beach Body’ is definitely an improvement on ‘Taking You With Me’, partly just down to the fact there isn’t a fucking cowbell every 2 seconds. To be fair to them lyrically they’ve returned to something close to what got me into them in the first place, but it still doesn’t change the fact that sonically they are just pretenders now. I can’t quite put my finger on a specific band they remind me of because they’ve just become a homogenised bastard son of every indie pop/indie/middle-of-the-road-meh band around at the minute.
I do want Blanketman to do well because I know there is something in their songs that is worth hearing. It’s what got me into them and it’s what’s making me write this negative review instead of just ignoring this song like I would do for any other track that sounded like this. For now though, to put it in their own words, ‘It’s just the same old shit’.
