The Like are three nearly-out-of-teenage girls who have discovered pop-punk, but instead of taking it down some grotty toilet in Brixton or Brooklyn, they’re going to shake it in the stadiums of the world. That’s the plan anyway, and it could easily work, given the girls’ ability to blend candy-coated tunes with a snappy chord-driven, dirty guitar sound. But they also bring a wistfulness to matters as well as a rebellious throwaway casualness that underpins the fourteen songs on Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?
They all play and they all sing, with vocals deftly oscillating from pouting in beguiling schoolgirly whispers to rocking out with the zest of a Chrissie Hynde on tracks like the magnificent ‘The One’ and ‘We Are Lost’. The more acoustic-lead ‘Bridge To Nowhere’ shapes up like a prickly pop classic. ‘What I Say And What I Mean’ rages like a turbo-charged Foo Fighters on a track that should see them picking up the airplay where most pop-punk outfits are refused admission. As on the opener ‘June Gloom’ they marry snappy verses with lighters-aloft hooks in a song that makes disillusion seem quite an attractive idea. The shimmering guitar on the slightly Beatlish ‘(So I’ll Sit Here) Waiting’ is worth the ticket price alone, adding luster to the band's harmonies.
Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? is the aural equivalent of that book you know you shouldn’t read but just can’t put down.