There Will Be Hooks

posted in: Artist Features • Pop

No strangers to the art of reference, Single Serving Friends have been known to double dip into film when it comes to the naming of things. From Fight Club to There Will Be Blood, the Milwaukee band packages their songs with references to provocative cinema, but rarely flip the script when it comes to their own arrangements. Frenetic pop-punk with thundering drums, chugging guitars and dissonant hooks is the modus operandi. Add to that an earnest female frontwoman, and you have a band that falls somewhere between Paramore and Pretty Girls Make Graves. But the problem with Single Serving Friends isn’t that it’s derivative, it’s that the compositions are openly formulaic. Angular guitars deliver terse chord progressions, chug with an urgency and inevitably lunge into a break. The notes may change from track to track but the effect doesn’t. Look, polyrhythmic, multi-part, hooky rock songs are a lot of fun, but you gotta switch it up. The kids might drink your milkshake the first time, but they may not ask for seconds.