Can you judge a band by its name? As fair-minded listeners, we try to resist the temptation, but we're all human. Take We Have Band, a group with a name so generic it verges on parody. Sadly, one listen to the Londoners' debut album, WHB (yes, the name was so good they took the abbreviated form as their album title), reveals that this is no joke, or at least not an intentional one.
In fact, We Have Band may well have crafted the most serious, fun-defying dance-punk record since the genre's mid-2000s rebirth. This is the sort of album that begins with a piano ballad called "Piano" and only gets progressively more stone-faced from there. Even tracks presumably intended to be carefree floor-fillers, like the bassline-flaunting lead single "Divisive", sound curiously and persistently uptight. "Honeytrap" is almost painfully strained, its incessant chant of "It's time/ Rejoice/ Line up/ Clap hands/ Let's go" more a joyless command than an invitation to hedonism.
In taking such a dour approach, We Have Band manage to strip the album of any tension. The songs are so cautious and timid, so hemmed in by precedent, that it leaves little room for the unexpected; the mind-numbingly literal titles tell you what's coming. If there's a metaphorical meaning to "Centerfolds and Empty Screens", good luck deciphering it amidst the whining about unmet "needs." And while "Buffet" may not be their rewrite of "Banquet", they seem all too happy to settle for their own watered-down version of "So Here We Are". Of course, given dance-punk's flagging fortunes, We Have Band offer a few requisite half-hearted attempts to remain current. "Love, What Are You Doing?", in particular, seems to exist solely to earn comparisons to their more openly 80s-venerating Kitsuné peers like Delphic and Chew Lips. It's a fleeting, superficial nod at best.
With ambiguity losing out to obviousness at every turn, it perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that all three members of We Have Band are ex-EMI employees. WHB often sounds like it came right off an A&R assembly line, the various songs cobbled together from aborted Bloc Party, Foals, and Rapture album sessions. The result is a bland dance-punk Frankenstein.
