Hockey – Learn to Lose

Hockey

You know when hip new bands get used in the soundtrack of US teen televisual waffle; you might for instance have seen Death Cab for Cutie make a fleeting appearance on The OC, or heard Paramore spring up for a few seconds on The Hills when Heidi dumps Spencer for the twentieth time? Well now it appears that a whole genre of generic indie is coming through to fill those ten to twenty seconds where a dash of music is needed to add to the ‘drama’.

Hockey fit the bill perfectly, four perfect plastic dolls from Portland, Oregon who play a sub-par form of Killers-y new wave. Somebody out there likes Hockey because they’ve already appeared on Jools Holland and received the back-handed endorsement from Zane ‘I will promote anything if you pay me enough money’ Lowe. It appears that Hockey are being marketed like Kings of Leon, or the already mentioned Killers, where UK success opened up the market back home in the States. Or as it was once known ‘Doing a Hendrix’.

Let’s take a look at the video for the band’s latest single ‘Learn to Lose’:

0:10 – What’s this, a cameo from McFly’s Danny Jones?  Nope, it’s the jaunty vegan cheekbones of vocalist Benjamin Grubin. He doesn’t know what to do. So he gets up and walks around.

0:35 – Grubin joins his band mates, who were playing with themselves in the shadows, and then light erupts as the chorus kicks in.

0:55 – Turning his troubles into gold Grubin throw a sprinkle of gold dust. He throws like a little girl and judging by the look in his eyes, he wonders why he is doing this shit. Well, Benjamin it’s better than working in Wal-Mart.

1:00 – He’s off again; wandering off stage, there appears to be an electrical fault in the background, sparks flying everywhere. Health and safety buffs will be shaking their heads.

1:20 – They are back for the chorus. The band playing in front of the gold curtains, dust sprinkles in front of the camera pitifully.

1:45 – The limpest guitar solo you will ever see. The smugness on the guitarists face suggests that he believes he is Eddie Van Halen; the Guitar Hero generation, what a bunch of dicks.

2:08 – Grubin still doesn’t know what to do; his chimpy face gurns directly towards the camera, with his cold bedsit eyes. Come sit on my flea ridden mattress senorita.

2:35 – Bright light!

2:45 – Back to the chorus, the set explodes into sparkles, gold dust and smoke.

3.12 – That bloody overdone water effect, what you may have seen in videos for Fightstar’s ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’, Biffy Clyro’s ‘Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies’ or Kings of Leons’ ‘Sex on Fire’; probably made by the same sadistic director who wants to make fine young men of indie damp and susceptible to pneumonia.

3.17 – Clever editing cuts this the water in between the carnival-esque electric gold dust sparks. Water + Electric = Bad Times.

3:48 – And fade to black.

What do we learn? Generic indie band releases energetic yet ultimately dull and uninspired single, said single is accompanied by a bright yet frightfully boring music video.

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