Kid You Not has some pretty clear influences behind their melodic pop-punk sound. With semi-coarse vocals that lead to big sing-along choruses, Iron Chic and Red City Radio shine through. It’s not really shining music though. These are some cynical songs that wallow in an unpleasant world.
As a whole, this is a solid record with some flaws. The overall sound is punchy and easy to latch onto. The band writes earworm songs with a lot of whoa-oh material, but they rely a little too heavily on that soaring moment instead of breaking from the current. The best moments come through when the rhythm section push forward in songs like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” or “No Shirt No Shoes No Dice,” giving a harder edge to counteract the melodies that top it all off.
“Be A Lot Cooler If You Did” is one of the standouts, and in this song it covers all those same traits. There’s a little more movement within the verses, with Patrick Drury’s vocals rising and falling a little more, giving subtle variation amid the repetitive chorus. The lyrics stress frustration with the world with a trying-to-push-through-it-but-don’t-know-if-I-can tone. It’s played similarly in “Smoke Another Beer.” Drury sings with a bit more passion that nicely complements the overall shout-along style, over lines like:
Too lost to care
Too dumb to try
We’re destined to fail
but we don’t know why
Too often across Never A Dull Movement, well…it’s far from dull, but it’s just too similar to other artists to leap from the speakers. There are moving choruses and fist-in-the-air cathartic moments, but the songs are just a little too heavy on this aspect without more balance and texture, which leads to songs like “Me and Dead Owls Don’t Give a Hoot” to feel repetitive, repeating a lyrical couplet and riding that high energy moment instead of taking it a step further.
This is coming across more negative than intended. I’m really intrigued at Kid You Not and there’s a viable energy to their sound that’s takes the short attention span of pop-punk and mixes it with something punchier, with a rumbling current underneath that surface. Plus, the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m complaining about repetition for a record that opens with the line, “It seems everything’s been done to death.”
