Heyrocco Define Disney Grunge Through 'Teenage Movie Soundtrack'

Heralded as the latest line in ‘Disney Grunge’ (yeah, me neither), Heyrocco make their presence known on the opening track from soon to be released album ‘Teenage Movie Soundtrack’.

‘Loser Denial’ bursts through the speakers, confronting me with lyrics along the lines of ‘I hate almost everyone’ and ‘why haven’t I found my place yet?’ The last twenty seconds are all about drums colliding with a Placebo-esque vocal, making for an all-round pretty solid album opener.

This leads nicely in to ‘Melt’ which seems to be mainly about the aftermath of some messy sex in a heatwave, and I’m hearing a lot more grunge than Disney so far. Third track ‘Virgin’ has some questionable lyrics that don’t make a lot of sense to me, and seems to draw quite heavily on Nirvana riffs, and the American Pie kind of dumb-ass high school mentality where everyone wants to know who’s banging who and who still hasn’t lost their virginity.

The fourth song ‘Elsewhere’ goes a little bit in a different direction, maybe slightly more Disney coming through on this one, and more originality, it sounds like Heyrocco are being themselves here, rather than Heyrocco playing guitar heroes tribute band. Next up ‘Mom Jeans’ slows everything up and while the tune is ok, the title just rankles me immediately and I find it hard to focus objectively. It’s definitely going farther down the Disney route with this one though. ‘What It’s Like’ keeps things steady but that crashing cymbal carries on throughout, almost overloading with a constant whooshing sugar cane crush background.

‘Alison’ then kicks in with what sounds like a mashed up, dirtied up version of ‘Whatever’ by Oasis. Alison sounds like she’s probably better off without this guy to be honest, cos while he was out ‘having so much fun’ I bet she was probably sitting all alone in a dark corner, waiting for a text, a call, some kind of satellite signal to show that he wasn’t the same as all the other ones who just put her to work behind the bleachers and then never spoke to her again. Awwww poor Alison …

Heading towards the end of this album, things turn a bit grungy once more with ‘Jake Miller’s House Party’, with a nice repetitive refrain and a paranoia induced theme, and it does invoke memories of those times as a teen when your parents are away and everything gets a bit weird. It sounds familiar on the first listen, maybe again Heyrocco basing their musical style on those who’ve trodden the grunge path before them, but in quite a good way. Actually want to listen to this one again when it finishes.

Penultimate track ‘Santa Fe (Stupid Lovesong)’ is another slowie, inspired by a swiftly ending love story and a heartbroken girl, this could almost be a Disney story, but where the frog doesn’t turn into the prince though, he just hops off on a road trip to Santa Fe, leaving the princess with her heart shattered all over the yard.

Last song on the album ‘Happy’ gets me all optimistic, wishing for a happy ending for Alison and all her high school prom princess pals. It’s a slow one, once again, and its 6.03 minutes start to drag a little after the first minute or so. All in, I think it’s possibly worth persevering with Heyrocco, there are some nice little glimpses of who they are, maybe they could do with coming out from behind that ‘Disney-Grunge’ mask …

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Words by Mary Long

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