Nightcap EP is released by LAB Records in July, Manilla PR



Immediately the ears prick up and say two things. Firstly it’s of an indirectly pedestrian quality, and secondly it’s emo. If you were informed that the band actually hail from Brighton before hearing the record, while it is playing you would surely question the validity of that information. It’s such a convincing affectation (the strong American accent) that I could hardly believe they were English.

 
As things proceed it becomes clearer that The Auteur deal in the sunnier side of emo and, the more time you spend with the EP, the more you get a nagging feeling that you have heard this kind of stuff elsewhere. Not in the emo scene (or “arms race” as Pete Wentz would have you call it), no. It’s a marked similarity to Sum 41, Blink 182 and, shudder, New Found Glory. Tellingly The Auteur are actually closest in sound and style to the most ignominious of that less-than-feted triumvirate. Can there be any disagreement over which of those three that is? Absolutely not, I therefore feel no obligation to actually name them.

 
The guitar sound is lifted straight from that time where “number bands” occupied a curious position in alternative music. Too blandly innocuous for the older, more miserable teens who dug Korn and (may god have mercy on us all) Limp Bizkit, they sat just right for their early teens siblings. Their overriding sentiments of “schools is a drag” and “parents are boring” –yes, they really did sing about these things- inevitably mirrored the concernments of fourteen year olds everywhere.

 
The Auteur echo these groups so completely, they’re so adolescent, so feckless, so routine, so musically parochial -never straying beyond their particular melodic cul de sac: that of an exceptionally youthful brand of emo, it is difficult to separate them from the idea of the juvenile groups which thankfully died out years ago. Anyone with memories of those dismal days when the number bands ruled will have a very difficult time indeed with The Auteur.

Posted In Single Reviews, Jul 02 2009. Words - Richard