Essex power pop threesome Twenty Twenty are a band who can’t seem to decide what they want to be. On the one hand they seem to lust after being fully fledged pop stars, quite happily sharing stages with Miley Cyrus and McFly, touring the UK’s schools and having endless guest spots on children’s TV shows. On the other, the fact that they arrive on stage to a track by sleazeball rockers Steel Panther, dress like goth punks and come equipped with some meaty guitar riffs looks like they might hanker for a career in alternative rock.
It has to be said though, that blurring the distinction between pop and rock isn’t exactly new. Take recent success stories You Me At Six! and Kids In Glass Houses; they may be regular features in the pages of Kerrang, but hear their songs without glimpsing the fitted T-shirts and tattoos and all you’ll hear is pure bouncy, hooky pop.
This is no bad thing, of course, both bands write terrifically catchy songs, as do Twenty Twenty. Tracks like Forever, Third Time Lucky and new single Story of Our Lives have choruses chemically engineered to be all over the radio.
Just who the band want to have listening though seems to be a mystery, even tonight, the upstairs at the O2 Academy looks like a re-enactment of the parting of the Red Sea. At the front are around 100 transfixed fans, shouting every word and in thrall to everything the boys say. Then there’s a huge gap before you get to a few adults skulking at the back.
This doesn’t stop the band delivering a fine performance and, with the deafening noise coming from the front, you’d think the gig was stuffed to capacity.
The trio are back here in April and have a decision to make about what sort of band they want to be. One way lies Butlins and Blue Peter; the other speaks of tattoos and the toilet circuit for a while longer. We’ll see . . .
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