Kingsize

You can see it in their eyes. In their minds, Five are a hard rocking, hard rapping, street gang. In reality, though, they’re more likely to be interviewed by some stuffed animal than hang with the lads in the hood. All of which might make them slightly ludicrous to some, but it hasn’t stopped them making some fantastic pop music over the years.

Where else could a sample of the theme from ‘Grease’ (‘Rock The Party’) sit so comfortably to ‘Lay All Your Lovin’ On Me’, a song built entirely from AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’? Single ‘Let’s Dance’ is the sort of thing that they could do in their sleep but is effortlessly catchy and, with its Daft Punk style vocoders, right on the button of current trends.

Kingsize is nothing short of state of the art pop. It may be massively formulaic (those vocoders appear far too often) but there isn’t a single track amongst the fifteen that wouldn’t fit perfectly into daytime radio, which is all it really aspires to.

That said, only the hardest musical heart could find nothing to love in the exuberance of ‘All Around’ or the blind optimism of ‘On Top Of The World’. They haven’t quite got a handle on the elegant pathos that will see them truly cross over à la ‘Back For Good’ or ‘Angels’ but maybe that will come. As it is, Five – and Kingsize – have a good, if slightly plastic, heart.