[rating=3.00]
If nothing else, the California rock outfit the Mowgli’s will always have “San Francisco”. That tune, a jubilant ode to “being in love with love”, is no doubt guilty of pressing all the standard pop music buttons, but it does so exceedingly well, to the point that it’s no wonder that this seven-piece group landed a major label deal following that breakthrough tune and the album it is featured on, the self-released Sound the Drum. From its killer chord progression to its irresistible enthusiasm, “San Francisco” is a damn perfect slice of pop that rightly put this band on the radar.
However, that aforementioned irresistible enthusiasm can only go so far. Even when the Mowgli’s sing tunes on more melancholy or dour subjects, their cranked-up-to-11 vocal harmonies are always in full blast, so much so that one wonders if it qualifies as harmonizing or sonorous yelling. Used in moderation, this technique works wonders for the Mowgli’s; for instance, Sound the Drum opens with the twee male-female banter of “Hi Hey There Hello”, which it then follows up with the full-throated chants of “San Francisco”. The power of the latter is that it follows a comparatively less energetic track, although the former does feature a climactic shout-along featuring the lyric “See, I’m not skin and bones / I am sunshine and snow,” which sounds like a rejected lyric to the New Girl theme song.
All of this is to say, pulse-pounding geniality and a “go get ’em!” spirit are good things, but eventually the megaphones have to be turned off. This is the undoing of Kids in Love, the Mowgli’s second major label outing, following 2013’s Waiting for the Dawn (which featured re-recorded tunes of many of the Sound the Drum cuts).
Filled to the brim with maximalist vocal harmonizing, ultra-pristine big label production, and enough platitudes to keep the Hallmark card company in business in perpetuity, Kids in Love is, in every way, what we’ve come to expect from the Mowgli’s. The harmonies are on full blast and the hooks are never placed anywhere but the forefront. These musicians clearly love what they do, and they’re clearly quite happy with the place that they’re at now that they’ve hit it big. “I’m good, I’m good, I’m good, I’m good / Living life just like I should / Wouldn’t change it if I could”, they sing on “I’m Good”. At first, this pervasive camaraderie is inviting; when taking into consideration the story of the Mowglis, who started off as best friends in high school, it’s easy to understand Kids in Love as the arriving at the mountaintop for this band.
From the perspective of the listener, however, this energy wears out rather quickly. Even the ballads on the album, such as “Make it Right” and “Shake Me Up”, ultimately peak with stadium-filling echoes of harmonized singing. At one point or another, one has to wonder how the Mowgli’s keep the energy up. With a little more range in the dynamics department, Kids in Love would have fared far better. As it stands, though, each of these twelve poptimist anthems slowly start to merge into each other, until they become one amorphous collection of self-helpisms and predictable chord progressions.
As tunes like “San Francisco” evince, the Mowgli’s know how to write a quality pop tune. The problem with this record is that the band never deviates from the wheelhouse that makes that song great, confining themselves to a rote blueprint that turns what could have otherwise been vivacious pop numbers into banal exercises in volume and eager-beaver emotion. Rather than an indication of the talent of the Mowgli’s, Kids in Love is a generic Coachella playlist made sentient.
