Five O'Clock Heroes Bend To The Breaks by: Tom Bradbury Mon:13-Aug-07 Label: Glaze Year: 2007 WB rating 77 out of 100

It’s a pity for Five O’Clock Heroes that they missed the peak of the nu-rock craze by about five years. If their debut album, Bend To The Breaks, had come out in 2002 they would have had an instant audience. Lucky for them, their songwriting ability enables them to be taken more seriously than the many bands chewed up by the machine in that over-hyped period. Missing out on the craze could be a blessing in disguise, as there will be more focus on the Five O’Clock Heroes’ songs that their style.

Bend To The Breaks has an instant familiarity, sounding like you have heard the album somewhere before, and in a sense you have, for the Five O’Clock Heroes are prospecting well mined territory. Much has been made of the band’s ‘transatlantic’ quality, given that two of its members are from England and the others are all from New York, and sound-wise, this is a rather helpful tag. Frontman Antony Ellis is all Joey Ramone yelp, especially on tracks like ‘Skin Deep’ – chopped vowels, shortened words and that peculiar timbre give him that particular quality. But the Five O’Clock Heroes’ clipped guitars also exhibit a healthy dose of English post-punk and early Who – giving an overall impression of a band that is conscious of its roots. However, the ‘transatlantic’ tag serves the press more than the band, an easy gimmick to slap on the unheard.

The reality is that the Five O’Clock Heroes are going to have to work very hard to transcend immediate stereotyping. Fortunately, there is little of the macho posturing of Jet or the faux roughness of the Strokes in this band. Rather, they have inherited the Ramones self-awareness and refusal to take themselves overly seriously.

Image aside, there is a distinct sense of freshness to the Five O’Clock Heroes’ melodies, and without a doubt, this is what enables them to pull off their pastiche of such obvious sources. Bend To The Breaks is a record that will have you singing along in no time, and there are very few artists able to infect you that quickly. In this sense, more than any other label the media or industry will put on them to try and sell records (and sell records they will), the Five O’Clock heroes are a pop band. 

Since their sound is so basic, they rely on tunefulness, but that is not all they have to offer. ‘Time On My Hands’ displays all the core elements of what makes rock ‘n’ roll great – its catchy, simple and danceable. Yet there is also a particular lyrical cleverness to this band, the very words are catchy, not just in the way they are sung. Song titles like ‘Corporate Boys’ and ‘White Girls’ demonstrate an ease of accessibility. The Five O’Clock Heroes’ lyrics are just plain fun, utilizing such traditional themes as the office square and the urbane femme fatale. As Ellis sings on ‘Skin Deep, “These city girls are no good for me”.

Unfortunately, an aura of sameness does creep into the album towards the end. The Five O’Clock Heroes have a formula and they are sticking with it, which is fine if all of your songs are singles, but some tracks simply don’t hold up to repeat listening, sounding like pale imitations of their stronger counterparts.

The Five O’Clock Heroes may not be breaking any new ground, but they are writing songs that are fun to listen and groove to, and that’s never going to get old. They don’t always achieve the tunefulness they strive for, but they do so enough to make this an album worthy of its forebears.