This band has some promise. Grown Ups strikes me as what would happen if the Shook Ones took a decidedly more emo bend to their Kid Dynamite/Lifetime worship. In fact, the vocalist from this band sounds so close to the singer from the Shook Ones at times with the off-tune yet melodic shout-sing, that I had to check to make sure they weren’t the same guy. The press sheet keeps throwing around Cap’n’Jazz as a comparison, but Grown Ups is a lot more straight-forward (although they both are from Chicago, so I guess they do have that in common). It’s the type of emo that’s essentially poppy hardcore with a couple of clean guitars doing some note runs around the edges of the main melody. There’s also a lot of gang vocals keeping things sounding rousing. It’s a pretty good collection of songs that sometimes reminds me of what the last Lifetime album might of sounded like with a cleaner mix. If you need things on the more introspective, but not de-clawed side of the spectrum, or a dose of emo that isn’t full of “brootal metal” guitars and shitty screaming about “blacked eyes, slit wrists,” this would be well worth your time to check out.
–Adrian (Big Scary Monsters, [email protected])