My Device - 'Nervous System' (Shifty Disco) Released 11/12/06

Up to now My Device’s solitary claim to fame was in winning a new bands competition for some large magazine or other, and earning the right to share a stage with, er, Kasabian. Either all the other bands were so hopeless that they would render a Paris Hilton recording career viable by comparison, or My Device are fantastic live, because their debut ‘Nervous System’ is, more often than not, an amateurish, irritating, empty-headed excuse for a record that singularly fails in living up to the ‘hype’.

It’s faults lie not in the production, because good songs nearly always triumph lo-fi values and garage aesthetics. Neither are the band’s inspirations to blame, because in amongst the mess of ideas traces of everyone from The Fall to Faith No More to The Coral can be heard. But when the snotty punk of opener ‘Get On Like A House On Fire’ recalls The Levellers, or the staccato bursts of heavy noise on ‘Dangermeat’ elicit snorts of derision as opposed to Blood Brothers-esque face-punching, then something isn’t quite right. Here it’s the sense that vocalist Todd Jordan sings like a sheep being put to slaughter, that the dreaded words ‘comedy ska band’ are just a few title changes and horns away from being added to the biography of his Brighton three-piece.

And yet, deviating from our incessantly positive outlook thus far, there are two tracks that step away from the unsuccessful experiments long enough to reveal a melodic heart that almost justifies the Doherty comparisons regularly cited in the live reviews, all of which it has to be said have been generally complimentary (that’s our concession to being “fair and balanced”). ‘Aloha’ and ‘I Was Brave Today’ are slabs of handclap heavy, melancholic punk that suggest if My Device were to ditch the forced eccentricity they would be a band worth keeping an ear open for. As it stands, My Device are almost as cringe worthy as iForward Russia!, another band of smug-faced musos who think they’re cleverer than they really are.

“You Should Be Dancing” reads the legend in the inside cover of ‘Nervous System’. Yes, we really really should. Just not to this.