Sherwood: Sing, But Keep Going

In a world inundated with commercial pop and whiney pubescent anthems of the frolicsome teenage wasteland, Sherwood put their stamp on musicland’s endless supply of banality.

Coming at us care of SideCho records, Sherwood make their debut with album, Sing, But Keep Going, a collection of 12 cookie cutter pop songs painstakingly informed by contemporary mainstream artists such as Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, The All-American Rejects, and even a wee bit of the post-Pinkerton Weezer.

Failing to tap into any deep recesses of the human condition, this album is little more than a band peddling unoriginal material, riskless and worn but not offensive. Combining stale harmonies with predictable rhythms and chord changes, Sherwood are, in a word, boring. Lacking, in every way, the ability to satiate your musical palette, puts Sherwood in step with a surplus of predecessors.

Akin to so many other bubble gum pop bands posing as indie rock outlaws, they coalesce to form an outlet for tired hooks and crass sentimentality yielding advert-friendly, tepid melodies, parental-advisory-sticker-free, willfully taking their place in this long line of forgettable faces.

In sum, it is with a lack of all indie sensibilities, and a meager opportunity at the mainstream that Sing, But Keep Going seals Sherwood’s fate as a forgotten lyric in pop’s lukewarm lullaby.

- Bill Wallace
(Sidecho)