Budding Bristol pop-rockers strive to fill stadiums.
It’s too easy to criticise a band that plays with a foot in both rock and pop camps. The age-old adage for music writers is to bear frustration at ‘yet another band that hardly treads new ground’. With a well-trodden and stale genre concern, it is better to describe how good the band is at being average; The Chemists measure somewhere in the middle.
‘A Love Like No-One Else’ has a big pop chorus but constantly over-reaches itself. The group are treating their pop-balladry as if it were power-balladry. The singing borders on strained in an attempt to be expansive and the production only exasperates the feel. It is a fair-to-middling track which undoes itself in its delivery and ultimately becomes a source of embarrassment for the listener. You want to pity the band for creating a pastiche of something so achingly un-cool.
The single will please a few local halls and a group of 40-year-olds will scratch their heads, wondering why this big, anthemic tune hasn’t sold a million. Meanwhile an equally average band with a cooler look or a showy gimmick will climb the charts and go platinum. Pop(/rock) music is a cruel beast; let’s just hope The Chemists are having fun.
Rating: 2.5/5