Fresh from a Record Store Day appearance at Love Music, ‘Have Plenty of Fun’ is the first release from songwriters Richard Ferguson and David McGinty.
Despite the duo only launching themselves into the public domain in February they’ve managed to grab them rapid radio play and they’ve played as support for both Frightened Rabbit and Washington Irving at recent shows.
Opening with ‘Little Researcher’, a neat cut that balances weighty piano chords against their dovetailing vocals, Fake Major deliver four tracks of emotive, wistful rock that positions them as heirs to Snow Patrol and The Twilight Sad in the widescreen Celtic rock stakes.
‘Fiction’ plays McGinty and Ferguson’s vocals against one another once more, this time backed by brushed cymbals and gigantic chords that channel Coldplay or Travis.
They desire to refine and reinvent songs live and their Record Store Day appearance was a tribute to that impulse but ironically ‘Have Plenty of Fun’ often elicits the opposite impulse, even when the music soars they’re glass half-empty fellows
More interestingly ‘Cotton and Ink’s unexpected mid-song change of pace adds some dynamic variation while ‘Love in the Mundane’ neatly evokes long lost summers with its allusions to ‘kicking acorns’ and children’s illustrator Quentin Blake and the arrival of melancholic saxophone demonstrates that they know their way around a studio.
A solid first release.
Words: Max Sefton
Rave Child 
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