Black Honey
Written & Directed
FOXFIVE
Sassy Brighton pop-punks make a familiar but fun racket.
Brighton guitar quartet Black Honey have followed a familiar indierock career path since their 2014 debut, nabbing an NME cover, supporting Queens Of The Stone Age, and pressing all the right teen-friendly tamerebel buttons to secure Reading Festival slots and BBC 6Music plays. But even if their brightly hued pop-punk sound feels formulaic and conservative, singer Izzy B Phillips exudes sassy frontwoman charisma, while her guitar-fondling boyslaves make a generally exciting racket on this polished second album. Fuzzed-up stompers like Run For Cover and Believer are shallow, but the fun Summer ‘92 already feels like a future arenasized anthem, and Disinfected is impressively forensic retrogrunge pastiche complete with dynamic loud-quiet structure and humongous, moshpitrocking chorus. Phillips also does romantic sweetness with conviction, from intoxicated melodic chugger Back Of The Bar
to the woozy, stripped-down, gently menacing chanson
Gabrielle.
Their sugar-coated badass swagger might be toothless and adolescent, but sometimes teenage dreams are hard to beat.