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Album Reviews
Album Review: Performance – Red Brick Heart (Too Much Information)
By Marc Samuels | Published on Wednesday 13 October 2010
Performance first came to my attention in 2005, their single ‘Love Life’ being a work of fizzy electro-pop genius. But implosive inter-band dramas and major label shenanigans pushed them off the radar and their debut album garnered little attention when it eventually surfaced in 2007.
Since then fellow Manc electro-poppers The Whip, Delphic and Hurts have enjoyed quite a bit more critical and commercial success, but ‘Red Brick Heart’, the group’s second album, shows no sign of bitterness. Unfortunately, it’s not much cop either.
The punky ‘Unconsoled’ kicks off proceedings with a burst of energy but sadly not much in the way of memorable tuneage and thereon in things only improve sporadically. The sassy ‘Miracles’ goes some way to reminding us why the trio sounded so exciting when they first emerged, whilst ‘O, Surgeon’ has some nice icy, Numan-esque synths which strive to elevate it above the ordinary and into the realms of epic.
But these are bright spots in a sea of amenable but fairly unremarkable indie pop and synth-rock, of the sort done better by other bands in recent years (Shiny Toy Guns particularly spring to mind). Although it’s certainly no worse than the type of stuff The Killers made their name with.
By no means awful then, but ultimately unmemorable. MS
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