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Rod's New Car - For lifes little mistakes

Reviewed by Angela Savage on 3rd May 2005

Rod’s New Car are a four-piece band Lincolnshire band, who play easy-listening rock music. The instrumentals are simplistic at best, and the vocalist Luke Bodycot has an unfortunate nasal voice that all too frequently goes off-key. The band would certainly benefit from a stronger singer, as currently the poor vocals slaughter any halfway decent songs. Rather confusingly, the bassist seems completely absent from some parts of the songs, and so to have a bassist at all seems rather pointless and redundant.

Moving onto the songs themselves, I Need You, the first song is quite obviously a love ballad, but the vocalist doesn’t inspire any empathy with his whiny vocals and hackneyed lyrics that link love to a class A drugs and addiction. There is an overlong instrumental towards the end of the song where the bassist suddenly makes an appearance, but it doesn’t contribute anything to the song and appears completely unnecessary.

Natural High is the second song, and another song about love leading the singer astray. Again there is nothing to recommend in this song, except the demonstration of their ability to use simple rhyming techniques over actual substance. The singer appears to have difficulty carrying the song and as a result the vocals are wobbly and weakens any strength the song might otherwise have had.

Choke seems to show marginally more enthusiasm than the previous two songs and by this point you are learning to ignore the greater aural offences of the vocalist. The singer seems to enjoy the escape from the love ballads, and the lyrics are pleasingly full of angsty venom: “you ruined my life for a while, why don’t you just choke and die”. However the vocals are utterly emotionless, and the overall effect just serves to make the song seem rather silly.

The first thing I note about Alive, the last song on the demo, is the remarkable similarity of the guitar riff to Nirvana’s Polly. Quite possibly this is purely accidental, but it goes some way to supporting my belief that this band doesn’t have a creative spark to share between them. This song also seems the worst for obnoxiously bad vocals and utterly clichéd lyrics. The vocalist does no better trying to scream lyrics than he does trying to carry a tune melodically. Perhaps he should try a different instrument, or maybe become a manager instead. He may show some talent there.

Rating: 0/10
Website: www.rodsnewcar.co.uk

Luke Bodycot says:-

I was just wondering how u got a copy of our EP?
This EP is not very good at all but we are alot better now.
I had doubts about my singing and now u have just crushed heart.

9th September 2005 @ 12:19:29 GMT

Bob says:-

I have no idea how Angela got your CD, i'll try and remember how I got those reviews she did and ask...

If you'd like to send us a copy any new material you have, we'd be grateful... contact me and i'll get back to you with details of where to send it.

9th September 2005 @ 14:36:02 GMT

Luke Bodycot says:-

Can i request that this is taken down, because we never agreed for this to be reviewed.

7th March 2006 @ 14:49:10 GMT

Bob says:-

No.

Basically.

If NME gave you a bad review, would you request they take all copies back, remove the review and send them back out? You don't need to agree to be reviewed. That's the silliest thing I've heard, like... ever!! Just take it as is and try to learn from it. You can't hide bad publicity.

Remebmer, it's one persons opinion on your music, other poeple may like it.

7th March 2006 @ 18:39:42 GMT