Mt St. Helen’s Vietnam Band – Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band

 What the hell is a “Vietnam Band” anyway? We’re all familiar with that big fuck off hill in Washington that’s gonna kill us all sooner or later, right? Well this is a record by a Vietnam Band that’s from near there. On this evidence, I’m going to suggest that a Vietnam Band is a family-based unit (the drummer here is, apparently, the adopted son of the husband-and-wife duo that lead the band) playing entertaining indie-rock music that all too often fails to build on early promise and sometimes verges on all-out genre parody.So that last bit is more of a critique than a definition, but I think it’s useful with Mt. St. Helen’s Vietnam Band to get the negative stuff out of the way first, because they make it incredibly easy to forget about it the more you listen.  So, there’s nothing in the way of invention or innovation here ”“ at times it’s almost like you can pick out what they were listening to when they wrote a certain song, and play a drinking game to it. Every time the singer does his Win Butler impression, do a shot. Whenever they introduce that synth sound and try to be Wolf Parade, do two. Clap Your Hands-esque non-sequiturs, a bottle of beer.At worst, MSHVB go beyond just sounding like their contemporaries and tend towards being all-out parody. Remember Microsoft’s advert for their Songsmith programme? There’s a rumour going around that there was a scene cut from that commercial featuring MSHVB trying to finish their debut album in time. There’s nothing on here that’s offensively shit, there is just a lot of indie-rock-by-numbers, songs that start with massive potential and then meander around, going exactly where you knew they’d go before ending with a big final chord and then the next song starts up with the drummer beating his sticks together and shouting ONE TWO THREE FOUR.But, and it is a big but, like I said earlier, the band make it pretty damn easy to forget all these flaws. It’s a hugely entertaining album, and there’s no reason that a band needs to attempt anything new if they can do old stuff as good as this. On this side of the Atlantic we have to put up with a tedious endless stream of bands that rip off the Libertines, and do it badly. In comparison to that, who wouldn’t welcome a nicely done and well-produced rip-off of Arcade Fire? 70% Mt St. Helen's Vietnam Band on MyspaceÂ