Grate-Tastic

The Grates’ debut album, Gravity Won’t Get You High, is a frenetic collection of 14 guitar-driven tracks that have the kind of punch that only a chick singer can deliver. While they have the same vigor and short attention span as many of the bands in the current wave of British pop punk, like Maximo Park, Art Brut and Young Knives, The Grates’ don’t really provide anything new. Everything from their sound to their line-up seems to be reminiscent of other bands. The lead singer of the three piece band from Australia, Patience Hodgson, has the same cutting wail of Andrea Zollo of Pretty Girls Make Graves. Her vocals work best on the more interesting tracks like the repetitive “I Won’t Survive” where she sounds like a soprano yodeling, mixed with guitar-heavy rock.

The Grates’ aesthetic feels very bouncy and juvenile and their bratty-sounding lyrics are highly reminiscent of Green Day in their early days. Such is evident in their saucy tune “Science is Golden” when Hodgson sings “What’s the go with all these/New set of rules that you live by?/’Fraid you might die../Watch ’em go by.”

For a debut album, The Grates’ Gravity Won’t Get You High fulfill the formula by shelling out a couple of catchy tunes to be enjoyed by bubble gum punk enthusiasts but haven’t shown much depth past mere novelty.