It's difficult to sift through the suffocating layers of sickly, gloopy mediocrity to find anything overtly positive to say about MORNING RUNNER.
On the other hand, it's equally hard to work yourself up to the required level of poisonous verbal venom when watching (or, more appropriately, bearing) a band so inherently and debilitatingly bland that you imagine them not to have genes at all but rather stodgy, congealing lumps of clay in place of DNA.
Indeed, they do little to endear themselves to our angst-weary bodies by berating the media for sticking big, blaring "Morning Runner are a poor and severely-deaf man's Coldplay" labels all over them - their annoyance is, perhaps, fairly justified; but tonight's performance smacks of moody whingeing throughout.
Don't TELL us that you're better than most would have us believe; stop wasting your time and PROVE it - and no, not with those pasty, lazily-plonked, energy-drained piano progressions, clumsy, drifting vocals and half-baked key changes punctuated by an ungainly bass to plough new depths of mawkish, squealing, mundane plundering.
"Here's one we recorded in the studio" offers po-faced frontman Matthew Greener. Goodness, really?! How utterly fascinating. Somebody call the international press. Oozing with sarcasm I may be, yes, but I prefer to see a band emanate with innate, intrinsic integrity and believe in themselves without having to resort to desperately insisting upon their credibility.
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"This is a song we wrote about not selling out" continues Greener, garnering a loyal cheer from the gaggle of fans braving the solar heat of the frontlines, eyes agog, and a weak-willed, well-worn groan from those slumped comatose in the corners, hungrily scouring labels on beer bottles for something vaguely life-affirming to focus on in a final attempt to discover a reason to remain conscious.
With only a handful of minute, fleeting, will o' the wisp moments of genuine delicacy or tender, nurtured melody squinting through the stifling blankets of vapid fumblings and plodding 'emotion', it seems a slight shame that Morning Runner are unable to bring that damp squib of interest that burns, albeit quietly, beneath the sodden surface to the fore; or, at least, it would be if you had the drive to summon up the energy needed to pass any form of judgment on them.
As it is, I'm content to shrug my shoulders with a mild sense of expected despair, bury myself into the muffled coat of my companion and apathetically consider an extended period of hibernation.
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