Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 26/10/09
Label: Sunday Best

We've got a few little bones of our own to pick with Ebony's. "This…is the sound…of Ebony Bones…" an emphysemic Darth Vader intones as opener "W.A.R.R.I.O.R." kicks off into heavy fuzz synth, handclaps and tin pan percussion. Rather, however, "Bone Of My Bones" is more the sound of a low-rent Santigold with the attitude of a Grace Jones understudy: full marks for emulation, less for getting to the crux of what it is to truly channel aggression into creation.

Coming at the arse-end of a year that's seen the rise of the kooky female pop star as genre in its own right (Little Boots, Florence & The Machine, VV Brown, La Roux, Lady GaGa), Ebony Thomas will hopefully also mark the end of the '80s synth/new wave revival's ever-diminishing returns. "Bone Of My Bones" isn't bad, it's just all too familiar.

Sure, the music's infectious at times, Bones demanding she get unshackled atop "W.A.R.R.I.O.R."'s cacophony and, for a while, it's difficult not to get caught up in it's neo-glam stomp. Take a closer listen, though, and aside from vague manifestos, she has little to say outside of wildly-aimed adolescent niggles. "I really don't like to boast", she sets up on "We Know All About U", finishing with little panache: "Why do we smile at the people we hate the most?" A journey of self-discovery this isn't.

If this seems a little harsh, perhaps we should cut the girl some slack. Having self-produced and arranged the album, playing most of the instruments, she's clearly got talent - if not natural knack - down pat. And what first-time jobber manning the changing rooms at Next wouldn't believe that "The Musik"'s "Stop that job-related task / Miss Bones understands your pain" isn't speaking directly to them? When empathy unravels into "I lost my mind many times / But I lost my wallet and my mobile phone many more…We've done some good things and I hope we do some more", though, we've not much more than watered-down punkisms looking for an indulgent home.

Indulgence, however, might just have been the problem. In truth, there's a decent EP here - especially if tracks such as "When It Rains" were beefed-up with, perhaps, a Diplo at the controls. As it stands from her beats to her cloyingly self-conscious look (Bones apparently draws unibrows on her female band members in homage to Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo), the overall feeling is of an A-level student given full reign over the arts lab for her immediate precociousness, rather than any sort of longer-lasting wow factor.

    by Jason Draper