We The Kings - Smile kid

I may despise the cookie-cutter/swoosh hair/neon trend, I still think a few emerging pop-punk bands are okay and I admit I can sometimes fall for a few of their guilty pleasure hits. It was the case with three tracks off We The King's first album, which I thought followed a good formula of what catchy pop-punk is. Unfortunately for me, their folder on my iPod will remain filled with those three songs only as for now.

'Smile kid', their sophomore album, isn't changing the formula very much though. But, as the single 'Heaven can wait' (singles are always a good glimpse of this kind of band's records as they're most of the time the best songs), it's not working as well, a bit boring and hokey. The first verse reminds me a lot of The Academy Is...'s 'About a girl'. It seems to me that Travis Clark's voice came closer to William Beckett's, even if they already had the same tone. They added a touch of electronics in that song, as they've tried to incorporate some different sounds into this album as a whole: there's ukulele on 'Promise the stars' and 'In-n-out (Animal style)' features reggae rhythms in its verses. But none of those really manage to appear like a great innovation, just like the whistle a la Rio de Janeiro on 'Summer love' that ends up being really annoying. Even the heavier bridge on 'The story of your life' hardly convinces. The rest is what you can expect from a band like them, lots of hooks, catchy choruses (opener 'She takes me high' and its "Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" similar to Third Eye Blind's 'Semi-charmed life'), mid-tempo verses, puppy love-related lyrics, and a few ballads (the Jimmy Eat World's '23' chords-reminiscent 'Rain falls down'), including one featuring a Disney singer (in this case, Demi Lovato).

'Smile kid' will certainly please the fans and create immediate fan-favorites from the very start of its tracklist but this new collections of summer songs lacks the only thing that interests me in those bands: real hits.

3/5

Recommanded if you like:
All Time Low, The Academy Is..., Cartel
Check also:
A Cursive Memory, The Downtown Fiction, American Diary

www.myspace.com/wethekings
(S-Curve Records, 2009)