‘Whispering’ Bob Harris is giving this band a surprising amount of support, if their web presence is to be believed, starting with laudatory quotes and continuing with a gushing voice-over to their home-made “rockumentary” online video. Given the number of bands that man must hear every week, the suggestion is either of some kind of local nepotism (they’re South Oxon boys) or of a band whose attraction goes beyond merely being very good into something exceptional – which, I’m afraid, they aren’t, at least in the two songs we’ve been sent for review. Maybe the fact that they all still seem to be very young has something to do with it, the way those who are not so young any more are easily impressed by the achievements of those who still are. That may wash for Whispering Bob, but for us at MusicInOxford.co.uk it isn’t enough to be able to play your instruments very well at a tender age; we’re just interested in whether or not the music that comes out is any good.
And good it is, but with caveats: the biggest being that Mojo Pins are musically absolutely bog-standard. They’re a guitar/bass/drums/vocals four-piece whose music is smooth, slick, accomplished, well-practiced, well-produced and fits well in the mould made for Coldplay, Kings of Leon et al, which cuts two ways – they’re very good at what they do but they aren’t stretching themselves or their audience in the slightest. ‘No Prizes For Guessing’ lifts the intro from Radiohead’s ‘High And Dry’ and lapses into a laid-back indie-rock groove, drifting by happily enough; ‘Morning Rush’ is the better song, a more acoustic guitar-led number which sounds like Travis fronted by a cross between David Gray and, obviously enough given the bandname, Jeff Buckley. The lyrics don’t seem to carry any great message and are sung with the sort of stylised drawl which suggests the use of voice as an instrument rather than to convey a message, or a singer/songwriter who knows he has a good voice but lacks confidence in his words.
So it’s all fine. Mojo Pins tick all the technical boxes to be a good band, but at the moment they lack anything to make them stand out from the squillions of other good bands in the country. But they’re only young – who knows what they might do once they’ve had their hearts broken a few times.