The kids are not all right. The opening spiel of Alex White, singer and guitarist in Electric Soft Parade, is a petulant rant about the relative merits of his band's second album, The American Adventure, and pop-dancehall star Sean Paul. It perpetuates the ridiculous, self-righteous us-against-them indie mentality that you might hear hotly espoused in a student union bar. From Brighton, White is 21; his brother Tom, who sings, drums and plays guitar, is 19. Throughout the evening, they banter embarrassingly with each other and the audience as if canvassing for new friends at freshers' week.
After a debut that sold respectably in the wake of a Mercury nomination, Electric Soft Parade have crafted a follow-up that they probably think is terribly ambitious. In reality, these are unwieldy pile-ups of second-hand ideas that generally fail to coalesce into affecting songs. Opener The American Adventure typifies their lurching approach: a kind of lumpen prog indie-disco in which bits of Britpop, shoegazing and rehearsal-room riffage are unappealingly regurgitated.
It doesn't help that vocal charisma is in deficit, with both brothers singing like adenoidal adolescents mugging along to Elliott Smith records in their bedroom. Frequently, they fail spectacularly to hit notes. They also have a painful ability to scatter rather tuneful chords amid terrifyingly ill-judged ones, and a fondness for self-consciously angular discords that soon becomes extremely grating. Only Bruxellisation, based around a pretty, gentle guitar figure that builds gradually into an epic shimmer, captures and sustains anything lovely. Old single Silent to The Dark is at least hummable, although it is ground-level angst that could have been written by cartoon Disney animals.
As another plodding run of laughably unimaginative rock grave-robbing is delivered with furrowed brows, Electric Soft Parade confirm their status as the Spinal Tap of myopic home counties mediocrity.
· At the Waterfront, Norwich, tonight. Box office: 01603 508050. Then touring.
