ALBUM REVIEW: Beautiful Life – Junior

The annals of pop punk is littered with bands whose back story begins in their friends garage/basement. It’s these formative years that end up being the backbone for everything the band can build from – you won’t have to look far to find a pop punk outfit who owe everything they have to their strong work ethic when they were scrapping it out for notoriety in their local pubs/clubs. Welsh trio JUNIOR are almost the polar opposite to this – in the sense that each member has already fought their way to success outside the realms of music. Vocalist/Bassist Mark Andrews is indeed the high flying professional wrestler you can come across on weekly WWE/NXT UK television, guitarist/co-vocalist Matt Attard is an esteemed writer of theme tunes for sports entertainers, and drummer Si Martin runs the incredible non-profit Heads Above The Waves foundation. Simply put: JUNIOR are a group of musicians who are in the game unquestionably for love rather than anything else.

As heartwarming as it is to come across a band with such pure intentions – if it sounds like the most interesting segment of JUNIOR‘s identity is their back-story: that’s because it is. The Welshmen’s debut record Beautiful Life certainly throws a hook or two in the right direction, but as a cohesive 40 minute piece of art – the record never gets out of third gear, despite how much you’d love it to. Album opener Girls And Boys oddly sums up the entirety of Beautiful Life in the space of three and a half minutes: the endeavour is there but the ability to craft an anthem isn’t. The piano lead intro that drops intro a bass heavy rhythm is an uplifting start, but the jarring, flat chorus chimes of “To all the girls and boys, play with your broken toys” is a little too adolescent for its own good.

Musically Beautiful Life sits somewhere in between JIMMY EAT WORLD and BLINK 182, which isn’t necessarily a problem if your band is armed with a talent the likes of Matt Skiba or Travis Barker – but that’s not the case for JUNIOR. This becomes evidently clear on the emotive, yet drab Baby Blue and title track – which are both needlessly long and over expose the trio’s understandably thin amount of songwriting experience. Where this record sounds at its best is in its short, fiery blasts of poison. The one-two of PYD and Hey Becka are undoubtedly the highlights of Beautiful Life: their quick tempo allows Mark Andrews to lay down a vocal blitz, and drummer Si Martin crafts a 100 metre sprint of a rhythm section. It’s proof that JUNIOR may well have a spark up their sleeves, but they’re yet to find it.

For all intents and purposes – it’s somewhat miraculous this album even exists, what with the success that the trio have all achieved individually. But with that said, Beautiful Life very much feels like a side project for three career driven music lovers that wanted to put their names to something different. There may well come a time where JUNIOR can get together and craft a pop punk record that can steal some spotlight, but this album isn’t it.

Rating: 5/10

Beautiful Life is out now via self release. 

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