Tag Archives: girls and boys

>Today’s New Band – Standard Fare

>Turkish take-away food, eaten by a canal. Beer in the Student’s Union. Another. Chat to the guitarist and drummer at the merchandise stall. Catch the end of the support band (The Kraus Robocop). Marvel at the drummer’s party piece of playing a drum in the crowd.

Back to the Union, more beer. Cheaper there than the venue bar upstairs. Guess the setlist. Push to the front of the crowd, in line with one of the speakers (not the middle). Get sweaty in the mosh. Dismay that most of the sweat on my T-shirt isn’t mine. Chant for the encore. Chant for the encore.

Find moshpit treasure as the crowd disperses. Use moshpit treasure to buy another beer. Home, kicking an empty beer can all the way. Shower to remove sweat that isn’t mine. Bed. Post-gig morning tinnitus.

These are generic gig-going rituals. You’ve probably done exactly this, to the band of your choice. Last night, my choice was Art Brut (see yesterday and ad nauseum), and it was life-affirmingly brilliant.

If Today’s New Band, Standard Fare, keep producing songs as kind and gorgeous as Dancing, then many will have that same gig experience with them as the focal point. Dancing, a lackadaisical lament, could be the song that sparks your night out into life just as much as it could be the song to round it off perfectly.

“There’s always going to come a time when we don’t know the answers/ Always going to come a time when we should just go dancing,” singer Emma philosophises, entirely rightly.

Standard Fare‘s other songs are good too. It’s just that Dancing is wonderful – soaring stratospherically, moping glumly, sunnily alive; economical, bright, true. Lovely. If this doesn’t put a fire under your dopey synapses, nothing will. Listen here!

>Today’s New Band – Now, Now Every Children

>Say what you like about Oasis’ Noel Gallagher – and it’s not uncommon for these opinions to be accompanied by rolling of eyes and/or heavy sighing – but the man gives good soundbite.

This article in UK right-wing red-top rag The Sun is further proof that Noel should unburden himself of the task of writing drab pub rock and become a full-time commentator on Liam Gallagher’s wellbeing.

Quotes like, “He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup,” are far too good to be interrupted by long sessions in the studio to produce more plodding MOR songs. (It’s also kind of cute that The Sun suddenly finds itself coy enough to use asterisks to censor such corrupting words like ‘arse’ and ‘knobhead’.)

Today’s New Band are a world away from middle aged rock bloat, but who knows – give them 20 years and maybe they’ll succumb too. In the meantime, enjoy Now, Now Every Children for their youth and vigour.

Everyone You Know is a barnstormer of a song, in turns luscious and rawkus, the vocals honey-sweet, the guitars acid and taut. Cars – stand down Numanoids, it’s not a Gary Numan cover – harshly beats a bare drum and slips almost accidentally into a noisy climax.

Now, Now Every Children are detached and distant but induce a strange and strong sense of intimacy. Their songs will always be theirs, no matter how hard you may try to make them your own. Maybe one day they’ll fire off endearingly crude witticisms about their siblings, but for now be happy just to listen to their songs, and hope it doesn’t happen.