Latest Music Bar, 26th January 2009
It’s a cold, wet and windy night on Brighton seafront. People on the street are trussed up like Arctic explorers whilst wrestling umbrellas and huddling under bus shelters. The sad truth of it all is that summer seems like an eternity away. Tonight though, thanks to local showcase night, “Breakthrough in association with Rough Trade”, there is a little slice of summer happening in a starlit basement in Kemptown. Cue the blueskies.
This Brighton based four-piece specialise in making uplifting electro-indie pop music to warm your soul and soothe those winter blues. With influences including The Postal Service, Air and Boards Of Canada, the band’s unique blend of live instrumentation and lo-fi Atari style synthesisers is as laid back as it is stirring. As with most acts of this genre, there is an underlying optimism to their music, the guitars lending a humanist aspect to an otherwise sterile veneer. It’s the lyrics however, which truly set the blueskies apart. Lead vocalist Mike Fawcett delivers personal, melancholic accounts of cherished memories and lost love, doing so with note perfect precision. It’s also reassuring to hear an English band singing in their native accents.
The catchy vocal melodies work well against the bright, tasteful synths and drummer Ben Chandler’s relentless beats keep the girls in the front cutting shapes of all sizes, although I can’t help but yearn for a little more variation in tempo. Bassist Kelwen Cooke backs up the whole performance effortlessly, his crunchy melodic lines adding real depth to Darius Alexander’s first-rate guitar riffs. The end of the performance sees the first glimpse of rock sensibility as the band cranks up the volume and they begin to look like they’re enjoying themselves. In a nutshell, this is simple, beautiful pop music. Not the kind of soulless, disposable, spawn-of-the-devil rubbish that gets pumped through the tv. Maybe there is hope for pop yet.
Words by James Watts
Photography by Rob Thomas
