Pull In Emergency – Pull In Emergency

Pull In Emergency - Pull In Emergency

It’s worth playing a little game with yourself when first listening to Pull In Emergency’s eponymous debut. Pretend, for a moment, you don’t know some of them aren’t yet old enough to drink. And for argument’s sake, since debuts from young bands are hardly a new phenomenon (Exhibit A: Ash), pretend you don’t know that the band first started getting mentioned by mainstream media over three years ago, when several were still 13 (eat your heart out, Tim Wheeler). Ask yourself, does this sound like a band of wet behind the ears pretenders?

The answer, in fairness, is no. Possibly by virtue of the period of time that has elapsed since the first blossom of attention and the release of their first full length, Pull In Emergency have coined a sound that is polished and, at times, offers blooms of inspiration. Singer Faith Barker has a rounded weight to her voice that is both soft and strong and her vocal is delivered without any of the uncertainty or bravado that you might expect of a band defined by their age.

This will, no doubt, please the band greatly. “I hate it when people say we’re good for how young we are and good for our age,” bassist Dylan Williams told the Guardian back in 2007. “It’d be far better if they said we’re good, full stop,” added Frankie Bowmaker, one of the two guitarists.

The problem, of course, is that if you want to be assessed on a level playing field, you have to be prepared for the consequences. And the truth is, Pull In Emergency are, well, just okay. This is an album that certainly boasts some skipping, upbeat tunes and hummable melodies, but the overall recipe – trebly, jangling guitar overlaid with a strangely insistent lead congeals rather so that the wheat becomes indistinguishable from the chaff (insistent in the negative sense – it seems to rear its head whenever the rest of the music happens to look the other way).

This is a shame, as when things are going well, there’s a lot to recommend Pull In Emergency. The off-key riff that opens ‘In Silence’ is full of promise and Barker’s vocal veers wonderfully between jazz-seductress and enraged harridan. The chorus, too, is ingeniously catchy:  “Another load off his mind / You’re the only load he ever had.”

The problem is, these moments seem to decline as the album goes on, or perhaps it’s just that the ear becomes accustomed to the low-key verse, distorted chorus pattern. The production does the band no favours, smothering the bass and drums so that at times it’s as though they’ve been set down in a garden shed, with the recording equipment arranged outside. By the time ‘Cold Hands’ concludes an okay tune with a peculiarly tuneless, squalling finale, what once seemed enticing now feels drab and directionless.

If we were judging this band as a group of barely pubescent wunderkids, this album would be remarkable. But we’re not. Pull In Emergency have been doing the rounds for long enough to have learned the tricks of the trade just as truckloads of adolescents did before them. If this really is as good as it gets, then in this case, good is actually just okay – no more, no less.

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