‘Bands’ are what people who are neither good-looking nor creative enough individually form when they want to sell records. Examples of popular bands at the moment include Kaiser Chiefs, Muse and “Arctic Monkeys”, all of whom play regularly to literally dozens of people.
There are also ‘new’ bands. These are defined as being bands who have never had a hit, or who have not yet “punctured the mainstream consciousness”, whatever that means. This lack of success can be quite ironic, since new bands are often a lot better than the tired old ones already out there, eg. Razorlight. If there’s one thing life teaches us, it is that shit ALWAYS rises to the surface.
I have been listening to some new bands recently and have compiled my thoughts on them below.
Modernaire
Modernaire are from Manchester, which is a good thing, and they make offbeat pop music, which is a fucking brilliant thing, but the best thing about them is that as well as making music that is entirely amazing they are also very generous - offering to send me a multitude of pictures and mp3s when I added them on MySpace.
Special Features: Smart lyrics; songs about Manchester, ‘melodramatic popular song’.
Best tune: ‘Bloodshed In The Woodshed’
Link: MySpace
Daggers
I saw Daggers completely by accident at the end of May and they were brilliant. They supported The Whip (“by basically filling the dancefloor for them”, as a blog not a million miles from here noted) at the Roadhouse and were so good that I didn’t have to bother staying sober for the headliners.
Special Features: Amazing skyscraper-sized tunes; at least half the band are stunning.
Best tune: ‘Money’
Links: Review, MySpace
Dragonette
Not technically new , Dragonette are nonetheless currently lacking the chart recognition they so richly deserve. They are very good, and not just because they show that it’s possible to mix guitars with pop music without it all turning to shit (Miss Clarkson, take note). Most of their lyrics are mind-numbingly brilliant.
Special Features: Songs about infidelity, lyrics about razor blades.
Best tune: ‘Take It Like A Man’
Links: Review, MySpace
Hadouken!
Few new bands are being talked about quite as long and passionately as Hadouken! are. What could so easily have been laughable has become a phenomenon as Hadouken! have taken the country by storm, leading the charge of the (neon) light brigade who had their brains frazzled by Klaxons twelve months ago. Already NME coverstars, the band find themselves pitched between those that love it (most sane people) and those that don’t (mostly overweight and lonely people) in a way not seen since Marmite or Napoleon Dynamite. You wouldn’t mind having their poster on your wall, either.
Special Features: EVERYTHING.
Best tune: ‘Liquid Lives’, ‘That Boy That Girl’, ‘Dance Lesson’.
Links: Review, MySpace
Other new bands:
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