I Am Not That Much Help – Hotel Mira (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It’s always an exciting proposition to venture into an EP by a band when you have already heard fifty percent of the release in the form of advanced singles. On the one hand, you know and hopefully like what you have heard already, and in the case of The View From The Barstool and Waste Away, the word like hardly does my feelings justice. Conversely, you hope the new material lives up to the benchmark already set.

Making the most scintillating, mature, unique, and accessible pop music I have heard in a long time—and I use the term pop only because there isn’t yet a word that sums up the brilliant blends of pop and rock and soul and indie and more that the band creates their songs out of—I approach the two new songs with excitement and trepidation. Please don’t let me down!

I already know that The View From The Barstool is soaked in soul and finessed with funk grooves. I also know that Waste Away is destined to be a future classic—if it isn’t one already. So it is Oh Sunshine that I drop the virtual needle on and find the perfect blend of pop buoyancy and rock drive spliced together into a staccato groove. This is followed by Verona, a more measured, mid-paced, and dynamically less effervescent number but which acts as the perfect sonic sorbet, a moment of poise and reflection amongst the pop punch. (That said, any new band would still kill to have this as their debut release; that’s how good even the non-singles are from this band.)

I knew in the back of my mind that Hotel Mira wouldn’t let me down, but it is nice to have the proof. If you think mainstream music has taken a move towards the banal and mundane, the conservative and repetitious, I Am Not That Much Help will restore your faith.