Kassidy: Hope St – review

If you're four young men with a fine line in late-hippie chic and an acoustic guitar each, you are certain to be compared to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. So it proves with Kassidy, Glaswegians with hair down their backs and a penchant for harmony singing. Those harmonies are their main selling point – their forcefulness in performance is rather unnerving – so it's a shame they are often pushed deep in the mix on this debut album: they're the background, when they should be front and centre. The songs don't help them, sadly: Hope St seems to be an exercise in writing a song in every style that will support four guitars and voices, so we get a bit of Waterboys-style raggle-taggle (Stray Cat), some rockabilly (That Old Song), some sunny pop (I Don't Know), the big ballad (Take Another Ride) – and that's within the first five songs. It's all unobjectionable, but it's hardly inspired or inspiring.