Well, here I am, having finished my school career rather rough-and-ready than prosperous, concerning mere 13 years of school dominated by pure laziness. Having undergone the past week several festivities like the academic ceremony, the prom, and so on, I'm now indulging on my mini holdiday, before tomorrow I'll be heading for camping with my academic fellow sufferers. Another full four days of intoxicating my body with alcohol and cigarettes, but actually it's worth it after 13 years of mere boredom.
Anyway, the reason I'm blogging doesn't only concern my graduation, but some awesome bands that I've been listening to the past days.
Let's start with the exceedingly young indie group Bombay Bicycle Club from London. By the first active listen you'd think you'd accidentally marked a wrong artist in your music library and landed on a younger (!) Arctic Monkeys or Good Shoes version. The group, lead by singer Jack Steadman, has a similar song style as the above mentioned bands, broaching the issue of growing up, partys, drugs, girls, jealousy and thoughts about the world mainly in their songs. The band does very well on their instruments, very jangly, vibrant and hooky. Even though their sound does quite fit into the present wave of young indie guitar bands, the singer has a remarkable unique voice, very nosey and also very british, distinguishing himself from the existing pablum of indie singers.
The band has started it's career with the mere age of fifteen years old - oh wait, if you'd consider, that they now are only 17, that isn't very young, though - and having it almost 'settled' as they won at a band contest a gig on last year's V Festival, which is impressive. From there on Jim Abbiss(the very own producer of Kasabian, The Rakes and Arctic Monkeys) got ahold of them and they produced their first EP The Boy I Used to Be on BBC's own record label. The EP is out since early February 2007 and should be purchased here on mam store or downloads via iTunes or nettwerk.
My upshot for this band? I'd say, the band wouldn't need time to 'mature' or grow from adolescence into adulthood, because their rough, raw, sometimes coarse sound makes them unique and as the best example: did the Arctic Monkeys have to mature before their debut? You see, where I'm heading...
Here's some pre-taste of The Boy I Used to Be EP.
Links:
* myspace *website
MP3: Bombay Bicycle Club - Sixteen
MP3: Bombay Bicycle Club - Cancel On Me
So, let's go on with another shamefully young, nevertheless still amazing new London-based indie pop band, The Svengalis. Aswell as Bombay Bicycle Club, the band still stands out of the current NME dominated indie garage music mush, that circles around London. As I started listening to them, I immediately recognized ther music and their sound, but from where? It's maybe their sound ressemblance to other major indie bands like The Rakes, The Rifles, somehow Libertines-esque, reminding me of th 60/70's guitar music. The sound is melodic and still rock enough not be defined as garage. I'd say, the band has the right feeling when to use the synthesizer and when to start off guitar riffs. Everything's catchy, crispy, harmonizing, fun, easy to listen to and sticky to the listener's ears. I wouldn't call their sound, their style, their songs totally unique, because in that way they don't differ that much from other bands of this present London indie clique floating on the new rave wave, but their music is still worthy to fill some indie dancefloors in London or somewhere else. I 've read some articles about them where the band were referred to the next Arctic Monkeys, concerning age, sound(!) aswell as band biogaphy, but that'll be to much of a hype in my opinion, besides the fact that the band members are still very, very young. I don't want to talk this band down, if this would be my intention, I wouldn't have posted about them. I just wanted to show you some nice young band. They make good dance music, they dres neatly and are worth at least one download(for money).
The Svengalis have released their first single called Sting In The Tale which was released via their very own label (!) Villans & Roques in March this year.
The band has also been featured in Lamaqc's radio session and the results can be found on their myspace profile. The band's own website is pretty shit(which the band admits, though), but they've listed a honorable amount of links where to buy their single. So, please check one of the following links to support the future, soon-to-be, next Arctic Monkeys in their early status.
Buy on Rough Trade, Piccadilly Records, Norman Records, Action Records, Crash Records, Pure Groove or Selectadisc.
Links:
*myspace *website
MP3: The Svengalis - Best Days
MP3: The Svengalis - Runaway
MP3: The Svengalis - Soda & Cigarettes
So, coming to the end of my extraordinarily long post. Lately I remarked that I didn't do the posts as detailed and intense as I did a while ago. Ok, my finals and a good lack of time forced me to keep my posts short, so I decided to change that now. So, I hope you acknowledge my efforts...;))
Anyway, as I mentioned above, tomorrow I'm going camping with my friends for the next four days, so you've to stick with this post until Thursday or Friday.
-Oh and I you haven't noticed, I did some weak editing around my blog, but as soon as I have more time, I'll improve the layout for the indie dancefloor.
Have a nice week!
