Our Sound of 2020 roundup continues with some rock progeny…

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[4.75]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Killers covering U2 with shades of Thom Yorke in the vocals: it’s harmless. The titular imagery gets at the song’s impenetrability — it’s so banal that it becomes impossible to care about anything being sung. Most exciting is the notion that people find Inhaler’s singer to look like Chalamet or Healy. What are their thoughts when they learn he’s Bono’s son?
[5]

Ian Mathers: I was just going to make a joke about how this wasn’t my preferred direction for them after Pablo Honey and then I noticed this is Bono’s kid, and now for the very first time (even though I’ve seen others make the comparison before) I can actually hear the midpoint between early Thom Yorke and early Bono, and now this song feels cursed to me.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: I assume Inhaler understand by this point that if you put Bono’s son up front as your singer, he’s gonna get compared to his father. And you can definitely hear some of Bono in Elijah Hewson; he’s also got a little Jim Kerr to his voice, and, in fact, “Ice Cream Sundae” has some Simple Minds (pre-Breakfast Club) in its DNA. Unfortunately, there’s some Coldplay in there as well, and like a lot of Coldplay, the primary problem with “Sundae” is that it just kind of sits there, with no propulsion. It’s perfectly fine, but nothing about this makes me want to return to it.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Keane covering Kid Cudi is definitely a move. This is so big and cheery, like synthesized sunshine pop. Occasionally — as a display of difficulty — they add some digital scramble before bursting through it. Not sure we needed that; even the relatively plodding verses show control.
[6]

Tim de Reuse: The Killers, but significantly younger. The Killers, but all feathery and manicured and with a vocalist who sacrifices their party-hard energy for a distinct-but-unoffensive delivery. The Killers, but with fancy packaging and fewer calories.
[5]

Iain Mew: “Easy as an ice cream slipping out of your hand into the dirt” — vivid and relateable imagery. “Easy as an ice cream sundae” — sure, I guess, for how it scans, to be more extra, and maybe for some kind of easy like sundae morning resonance.  “Easy as an ice cream sundae slipping out of your hand into the dirt” — ???. To me ice cream sundae immediately suggests a glass and a spoon and sitting down to eat, and research seems to concur. Who is holding that above the dirt? Inhaler’s central simile is broken and misshapen. Like their choice of a frozen version of the sound of 2005, I guess it was an honest mistake.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: There is already much to unpick in the quote “there was a lot of music from Manchester in the ’90s, and the whole Britpop and Oasis thing. Every kid who’s 16 and sees that goes, ‘I want to be in a band’”, before it is even attributed to the son of Bono. Maybe if Noel Gallagher hadn’t written a song called “Live Forever,” the world wouldn’t be in this position, but he did, and those youths who valiantly eschew Aitch for RKID still have an outlet and, quite often, a record deal. Effectively, when Tony Blair invited Noel to Downing Street (along with half the Chipping Norton set) recursion was ensured; hence this being a thinly disguised Blossoms song, which is no bad thing.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Getting serious over synth-pomp about sundaes is some serious drive-thru-postal shit. 
[3]