I wish I could go back in time to the year I was six and got a plastic guitar for Christmas.  I could form a band with the boy next door with his head in a bucket on rhythm and the crying baby down the street on vocals. We could then write, record, and produce an EP, and hands down it would be better than this effort by Brisbane band, I Heart Hiroshima. 

A Three Letter Word for Candy is the debut EP for the three-piece, which trades on its ‘cool’ reputation rather than musical talent or creative innovation.  Without having ever heard or seen this band I was told by Brissy scenesters that this was the new band to name-check.  How many of these people had actually listened to the music and formed their own opinions remains unknown.

Rather than learning their instruments properly the sound is juvenile and repetitive.  Although technically it is pop music, they lack any gift for melody and settle instead of mono-tone vocals and flat chord progressions.  The drumming is loose and the guitars are slopping and while churning out music that can only be compared to other more successful Brisbane band The Grates, this music lacks any personality and doesn’t leave any impression on the listener the way good music does.

The five-track EP is only thirteen minutes in length and provides little variation throughout.  Tracks like ‘It’s a Crime’ and ‘Bubblegum Gun’ might as well be the same and frankly those thirteen minutes were wasted when I could have and would have rather been listening to almost anything else.

Is it bad taste to say I Heart Hiroshima blows bigger than Hiroshima itself?