Bombay Bicycle Club - 'Magnet'
True to form, it's just at the point at which I am mid-rant about all these new bands who go about calling themselves deliberately ornate, Victorian or Edwardian names, that a decent one comes along, demanding attention and setting the trend in stone. As Dennis The Menace would say, BAH!
Actually, to be fair, they're all pretty good. The Victorian English Gentleman's Club, the Duckworth & Lewis Method, Reverend James And His Powerful Elixir, the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and the rest are all fine in their way, but slightly too keen to use their chosen title as a way of pretending to be part of a vision of the past as laid out in the film The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen*.
(. Somebody got a projector for his birthday.)
Hats off to any band with the backbone to start their song with a spare drumbeat like this. It's always a brilliant curtain-raiser, even if you do occasionally find yourself wondering what the song is: something by the Pigeon Detectives? 'Song 2' by Blur? 'About You Now' by the Sugababes? Something off the soundtrack to The Inbetweeners, maybe? Oh, it's Bombay Bicycle Club. Yay.
Most of the tune seems to have been swallowed up in the band's throatal warbulator, which is different from the autotuned neckular vocoderisor which has become such an irritatingly over-used effect on modern pop songs. It's different because autotune makes the singing sound robotic and plastic, whereas in this song, Jack sounds like he has a mouthful of cotton wool and is singing on top of a tumble-drier in full spin.
Luckily the rest of the band are playing up a storm in the background, so you can't hear the rattling buttons and zips against the drum as Jack's jeans and jumpers tumble and turn. And the big Coldplay/Editors melody in the chorus is at one and the same time The Best Bit and The Bit With No Singing, so maybe he's just trying to keep out of the way.
I don't really get why the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ are getting the acclaim (not THIS ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, you understand, clearly WE are enormously good value for money) that similar, better bands like Brakes are not. OK they're younger and newer, but is that all there is to it?
Maybe if Brakes called themselves Reverend Sweeny's Affiliated Workhouse Pals, things would be different.
Download: Out now
CD Released: September 28th
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Music page
(Fraser McAlpine)
* In tribute to this fine work of fiction, I made one of these bands up. But which? That's for you to find out...
PS: ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Music reviewed their album 'I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose' recently, and while there's a lot of writing to the review itself, and it is good writing, it can be effortlessly summed up with the phrase "like a less quivery Maccabees".
If you'd like to read the rest, it is here...
Comment number 1.
At 24th Sep 2009, CurtainJerker wrote:I've liked this for a while. The singer's "individual" voice, though, does sound a bit like he's deliberately trying to sound quirky.
Still, given some of the muck ChartBlog's given four and five stars in the past, I'd rate this more highly.
Enough about all that though. More important is the fact that that photo of the band makes them look about fifteen.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 25th Sep 2009, flatknees wrote:alright track.. would hardly call his voice 'quirky'.. a more dark word is required methinks.. its in the whole joy division, interpol, editors and white lies thing. for me it sounds more like strokes than anyone else, i swear i hav heard that riff on 'is this it'.. good track i guess, 3 stars.
will check brakes.. the band.. brakes on my non-existent car are fine...
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 28th Sep 2009, MozFoz wrote:I like this, there's a way to go, but this is showing potential.
I love Pains of Being Pure At Heart, even though the name is the wrong side of pretentious.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)