The Medic Droid - What's Your Medium

Modern Art Records

July 30, 2008, 08:00 PM

Imagine, if you will, you’re in a band. You post your first song up onto MySpace and suddenly thousands of people the world over profess to love what you’re doing and everyone wants a piece of the action. What do you do? Anybody would’ve thought such an instant success story would reel off into a protracted story of stardom without merit and riding on waves of popularity straight to the bank. You are clearly not a member of The Medic Droid, these guys have been doing it since the end of 2006 and have only now got everything together for an album, despite talk of its release for around a year without it materialising.

It’s a testament to the times that a band can merit a record deal based on the popularity of one song, had a record label A&R spotted these guys without the massive numbers following them, it’s quite possible they’d have been overlooked and written off. There’s no massive story here of how everything suddenly came together, there’s apparently no explanation for just why this album has taken so long to see the light of day. That this album contains eight songs, one of which is a cover is a little disappointing in terms of material. When you add to that, ‘Fer Sure’ is present, not a massive wealth of new material then.

Enough of the detractions, if you’re thinking The Medic Who? Allow me to elaborate. Phoenix, AZ two piece, they were originally a three piece. The music is an interesting, and quite unique mixture of rock and techno elements. That’s it really, you can sum it up with those two words. The electronic elements are a little more expansive than your straight up techno or wanna be electro-rock/emo bands but the basic formula is all the same. In a nutshell TMD sound like a post-pubescent Hello Goodbye waking up next to a five dollar whore, following a massive drug and alcohol binge, with the mother of all hangovers and a bottle of whiskey on the dresser.

These eight tracks pass by without much to enthuse or surprise, ‘Fer Sure’ is the highlight, and you’d have hoped in the time it took to get this thing released that they’d have moved on and written some other material to push the boundaries a little. Sadly, for The Medic Droid, ‘Fer Sure’ might always be their anthem, they may wind up being victims of their own success. For its worth, ‘Fscen8’ is a top tune with a cracking chorus, ‘It’s All About Love’, ‘Tease’ and ‘The Killer Anna’ are also worth giving a listen. A poor cover of Madonna’s ‘Into The Groove’ does a lot to let down the whole album, being smack bang in the middle it splits the vibe like a like an ex marching in on your wedding day and professing an undying love. It’s easy to see why The Medic Droid got so hyped up off MySpace, they don’t look like outgrowing that mantra anytime soon, disappointing considering this has been so long coming.