The Faults have been pitched as, "The Strokes during a massage from
Jack White at Woodstock in 1969." However, on first impression, I would
describe them as, 'a Strokes cover band at a wedding in Australia'. It's increasingly
difficult to see artists from Australia making it big overseas. Only Tame
Impala, Wolfmother and Cut Copy have made it across either end of the pond in
recent years. What makes it even more embarrassing is the lack of diversity
within Australian popular music. In both the UK and USA, chart's still
regularly feature music that isn't pop, in Australia, that’s all there is. So
when an Australian band makes its way to me and has the above description, of
course I'm going to be both excited and interested.
Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of The Strokes. I'm a huge fan of garage
rock and all its 90s/00s sub-genres. Tracks like "Patience" and
"Piece of Mind" are one in the same. As far as I’m concerned, this is
nothing but a bad attempt and emulating the sound of The Stokes and Julian Casablanca’s
vocal. The connection to Jack White baffles me because all I can hear is very
basic guitar progression, a simple rock structure and some fuzz guitars with
little but an empty sound on top of a heavily effected vocal.
"Leather Jacket" opens with a poor drum pattern. The following
guitar is no better and nor is the vocal for that matter. I know that it sound
harsh reading this, but honestly, criticism must be given in order for The
Faults to understand where they're going wrong. Now it's obvious they know what
they're doing, but I don't think they know why they're doing it.
"Summer" is better than the previous tracks, but the reverberated
guitar sounds forced, as does the vocal. Real garage rock was raw, untidy and
dissonant. This is the complete opposite, it's just poor.
"Chivalry" brings nothing more to the table. I mentioned the lack
of diversity within Australia’s music scene. Well no wonder there's no
diversity if their own artists can't bring in their own diversity. In order to
be successful, they could do a number of different things. If they don't care
about success, then fine, but at least work towards a respectable sound, because
right now, The Faults are leaving nothing but a bad impression on me. Scrap the
vocal effects, scrap the reverb on the guitar and start writing better
instrumentation for the drumming. Saying this is so simple, yet so complicated.
Having tracks less than two minutes is the right thing here; I can merit them
on that. Improvements must be made before the next PR sends over The Faults
again.
~Eddie
