EP Review: Push Back

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Admittedly, home grown pop-rock has never been a particularly easy sell in New Zealand, but when Openside started turning heads with last year’s single Worth It the group began a rather rapid ascent, opening for various international acts including Twenty One Pilots and Melanie Martinez, selling out their own secret headline show and culminating in the recent release of their debut EP Push Back.

The collection opens up with the hook-laden All I Really Want – catchy as all hell, the song initially comes off as the kind of upbeat, self-help anthem you might put on a mix-tape for your best friend who was recently dumped. Aspects of the lyrics seem to flit between points in a relationship and striving to maintain your sense of self, whilst some scathing millennial rhetoric comes forth in the line “What’s your problem with my generation? soft, indulgent, passive, lazy”.

The EP’s first single Branches follows on, keeping the momentum up with an obligatory pop-rock “da da da da da da da da” refrain. The song comprises some solid mixing – the drums especially, are super tight and the overlaid tambourine is a slick addition.

Good Boys starts more middling in tempo before moving through a pretty standard pop structure. The percussion sample on this track felt a little over-used and at odds with the general feel, but still a solid piece altogether.

If “upbeat melancholy” is a thing Down The Drain definitely fit the bill, the contrast of the track and the frustrated, semi-nostalgia of the lyrics is a refreshing change of pace before the synth breaks and cool introspection of Letting It Out steals attention.

Closing out with the title-named Push Back, the collection is a slickly produced taste whetter, but by no means a summation.