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My immediate reaction to Strive was that lead singer/pianist Derick Thompson must get his hair done at the same place all his female relatives do. I can only assume that he may do so due to a family discount of some kind with the hairdresser in question.
Hair styles aside Strives are a 3 piece whose music consists of sickly sweet bubble gum pop. Primarily the music is driven by crescendos of piano chords and melodies, while the guitar work mostly compromises of someone fiddling around in the background. It can be assumed this is the U2 influence mentioned in their record company’s bio for them, specifically the Edge’s attempts to create more layered and textured sounds, as opposed to a binary between rhythm and solo sections (thought I feel a better example of this would be Johnny Marr’s playing with The Smiths.). The guitar and bass work on “Fire” is not in your face or even particularly upfront and to be frank I think this is because teenage girls (whom I am assuming compromise Strive’s fan base) do not usually dig epic or even gutsy guitar parts (though this is a further assumption as I have in fact never been a teenage girls). Most of he teenage girls I have known tend to veer away from serious shredding and instead go looking for pretty boys who make sparkly pop music and Strive are pretty much that, verging on the fit clenching of Bon Jovi and Chesney Hawkes, complete with ‘heart wrenching’ vocal harmonies. The songs show some good dynamics, building from sparse piano lines and drum beats to the monumental clashing ends, although every track does seem to follow this pattern.
The one thing that kept popping into my head whilst listening to this record was ‘The O.C’, as in the Teen Drama set in Orange Count, California. I have never seen over five minutes of ‘The O.C’, left alone a whole episode, but never the less I was constantly reminded of it. I think it was because I decided that Strive’s music would compliment a Pop Teenage Drama quite nicely and ‘The O.C’ was the only one which had ever held my attention for over 3 seconds (it probably made it to be about 72). I am however quite familiar with the theme to ‘The O.C’, “California” by Phantom Planet, which I actually like, if only because repeatedly singing the chorus in an exaggerated Kaaleefornyan accent makes for a very good way to annoy people. Although none of the tracks off of ‘Fire’ strike me as being that catchy I still believe Strive could swing this kind of deal and become the soundtrack to four 20 episode seasons of teenage angst set around pool parties, convertibles rolling down palm tree lined boulevards and daddies who refuse to buy their daughters the yachts they had been promised because it transpired they had a crystal meth addiction, eventually culminating in some kind of cliff hanger ending. This is of course fine, if you are into zoning out to this kind of thing, but sooner or later all these shows eventually “jump the shark” (see the “Hollywood” episode of ‘Happy Days’) and the writers really start scraping the barrel for ideas such as revealing that one of the key protagonists is in actuality the hermaphrodite love child of Ron Jeremy and Barbara Streisand.
Yet this is not Strive’s problem and I am sure their teenage fan base will be able to make the distinction between their neatly groomed Pop songs and which ever over ambitious plot lines they will no doubt provide the background music to.
Listen: www.myspace.com/strive
