Visually they're simultaneously a total let-down and curiously overdone; one seemingly albino, clad in fetching white to match his hair, another thoroughly Robert Smith of hair and stomach (the cruel might whisper "him out of The Others" but let's refrain from such unnecessary spite). Singer Finn Vine, whose seedy tones could reasonably have led us to expect a larger-than-life, slinking, sleazing sex giant, turns out to be an unremarkable looking fellow with unremarkable hair in unremarkable pinstripe whose vocals have none of the hauteur or seduction promised on record. Disparate and cartoonish as they are physically, their sonic presence is less memorable and sabotaged by tinny sound, reducing their great potential down to a clumsy mash of synths and directionless guitar, glued uncertainly together by shaky work in the songwriting department.
One can only hope time, practice and ambition will pull White Rose Movement closer to the enticing entity they seem capable of being. Certainly they're worth a second look. They are perhaps a club band; in a room where everyone's drunk and dancing and sweating and reverberating off each other in the hope of later getting laid, WRM might find their stride. In the Barfly, playing to a half-full room, they sound flat, and about a year behind the determined confidence and professionalism of their debut.
