Tim: This Belgian boyband, despite looking barely old enough to understand the concept of musical history, have chosen to model themselves on the Beatles.
Tom: There are certainly worse role models for musicians, but those are big shoes to step into. The Beatles changed the world: how about the Bandits?
Tim: Well, they’ve certainly got the screaming teenagers, but do they have the music?
Tim: Ehh, sort of. It’s not a bad track, when it jumps back out of the middle eight and finally picks up the steam it should have had throughout the entirety of the song.
Tom: There’s some good bits in there – that descending scale on “brand ne-e-e-w” is lovely, but yes: it takes a while to get there. Early Beatles songs didn’t really build: they just started at full throttle and never stopped. That was the only way they could be heard over the screams.
Tim: Ha, true. Really, if a band like this is going to enter Eurovision, it needs to be big – at the very least State of Drama levels, and unfortunately this isn’t. It could be – there’s potential here – but annoyingly it’s just not enough. (Admittedly, given the awful, awful eventual winner of Belgium’s contest, even the actual Beatles wouldn’t have won.) Come back in a few years when you’ve, you know, done drugs and all the other stuff you need to do and maybe you’ll have a shot, but right now it’s just a pipe dream, kids.