>Cities shape bands. Listen to Manchester’s Happy Mondays, and the influence of a city dragging itself up from dereliction on a cloud of E-fuelled excitement is clear. The La’s jangly indie sea-shanties have Liverpool’s mucky fingerprints all over them. The Clash were born from both the racial tension and collaboration of late 70′s London.

Today’s New Band are another child of their home city. The King Blues are a rare example of a band that aren’t happy to grind out the same-old songs, but are actually trying to fuse their individual, disparate influences into something new. The mating of punk and reggae has happened before, of course, but that doesn’t make The King Blues any less interesting.

On Let’s Hang the Landlord they dream of a better life by considering the, er, tried and proven technique of lynching your landlord. “Let’s have the landlord from the top of the stairs – we’ll live like millionaires,” they sing, whilst still celebrating having the time of their lives in their squalor.

The King Blues are an indication of what might have happened if Manchester’s The Young Offender’s Institute had kept building on their early promise – a mix of testosterone-fuelled boisterousness and a pile-up of sounds that could only really come from a large, multi-cultural city like London.

Aspirational and in tune with their audience, The King Blues are a band from right now, for right now. So listen to their songs here – right now!