Safari – Maybe Tomorrow

Safari are, if you didn’t know, a Cleveland based power-trio with a penchant for dressing up, or so the pictures on their myspace would indicate. Hmm, it’s a shame then that Maybe Tomorrow would suggest that putting a but more imagination into their music, rather than their stage get-up may be the best course of action they could take.

The eight tracks that make up this mini-album are mercifully short and so at least the record doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. There are, oddly enough, some rather strong nods to The Libertines and Arctic Monkeys in the angular yet rough around the edges attitude. Opener ‘Connie Get’s What She Wants’, is one of the stronger numbers, featuring a Big 70s riff and Nico Walker’s hoary and strained hoary, strained vocals adding another, more discomforting, interesting dimension to a fairly bog standard arrangement.

The production doesn’t do Safari many favours either, the power pop dynamics are lost in the lack of sharpness. ‘New Lover’ is a regulation chug, however once again Nico Walker’s double-tracked vocals sound oddly out of place and disjointed but actually make things more interesting; it’s as though he has come in from another room to drop a few lines over some random power trio.

‘Banger’ is an unimaginative dirge that you wouldn’t be surprised to hear any band muddling through in a random London toilet venue and with a chorus of “can I have some money/can I have some money/can I have some money” – “lyrically uninspired” doesn’t quite do it justice.

Maybe Safari would have gotten away with such ragged indie punk around the turn of the millennium but it’s really not enough any more, it’s pretty much devoid of any innovation, tries to fall back on songwriting which in all honesty isn’t there. It’s ragged but without the requisite charisma or character to mean it’s worth a listen. Maybe it’s all best summed up by the aptly titled penultimate track ‘Easier To Forget II’.