MY COO CA CHEW
About the same time that the Mercury Music Prize was being awarded across town in Mayfair, I was slouched outside the Dublin Castle - waiting to see Strokes-like New Yorkers The Virgins - when it suddenly occurred to me that it's true what they say: some people in the music biz really will go to the opening of an envelope.
And yes you're right. Your humble DJ didn't get an invite (can't think why?).
We bow down to Elbow though, who, even without the warmth and sensitivity of their album The Seldom Seen Kid, probably deserved the gong as testimony to their resilience and perseverance over the past decade.
In some ways it's a very timely award, because determination and reinvention are two of the keys to music in 2008. As the gap between being The Next Big Thing and Last Year's Thing gets shorter all the time, the casualty list of short-term bands grows by the week - with the knock-on effect that groups are resorting to new disguises to warrant a second crack at success. It's like Rock's equivalent of the old bouncer trick (get turned away, swap jackets round the corner and then have a second try).
Elbow themselves have seen the door slammed in their faces before. They were dropped by Island Records before their first (unreleased) album ever saw the light of day. And they split from V2 more recently to join Fiction. But at least they retained their identity.
Other groups are subtly and stylistically changing, and at the same time taking on new mantles. Much-tipped XL Recordings signings, the Essex band Magistrates, were - give or take a member or two - formerly a group called Echelon who recorded a couple of interesting singles for the Poptones label before disappearing and re-evaluating their schtick. Meanwhile White Lies, who penned a substantial deal with Universal earlier this year, previously traded as the flawed but OK indie band Fear Of Flying.
This phenomenon isn't new, of course. The Kaiser Chiefs had their own Elbow moment, making a record under their old moniker Parva for a label called Mantra Records (but Mantra folded and the band were sent on their way while copies of the CD were destroyed before they made the shops). What this shows however is that, either some of these people are royally masochistic, or they're tenacious enough to hang around until they get their music heard.
Enter Chew Lips! I'm very excited by this. Chew Lips is the new band fronted by a singer called Tigs who by rights would probably already be a bit of a star if her last band hadn't come off the rails early last year (though not before releasing a couple of spirited and edgy indie singles).
With no news forthcoming, I honestly thought she'd disappeared for good. But then she turned up duetting on a track with The Brute Chorus which featured on their debut single - and through a throng of people at the front of one of their gigs reintroduced herself with tantalising news of a new band.
Six months later and the second-coming trio CL are already being spoken about in hushed tones by the nation's talent scouts (quick, I'd imagine, to try and find someone - anyone? - who could embrace the edges of the electro-pop market). It's a shame in a way because it's still early days for CL. They could do with another three months before being swamped with critics, but what the heck. The demos sound terrific.
Which is why I ended up in east London (the Beirut of fashion) on Friday night standing in the crowd at 93 Feet East, which throws open its doors for free on Fridays and lets bands romp on stage in front of a gregarious, drunken rabble who, for the most part I suspect, won't remember a single group's name by the following morning.
It is a testing setting, but CL's set builds really well. Tigs herself arrives on stage looking a little mumsy; a short busy figure, with a neat haircut, all of which hides the dervish within! Behind her two boys play keyboards and bass, one of them sporting an almost Vince Clarke style haircut, which makes me think of Depeche Mode in the days when they did press shots in their back gardens in Basildon.
The songs are much deeper than your average 80s pop though; they're deceptively infectious but with a crunch. Tigs takes time to settle, but when she grows in confidence -once she has the measure of the crowd - she's all round compelling. A passing Lukas Wooller, he of Maximo Park keyboard fame, nails it well when he says she reminds him of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (the big voice, the bowl hair - he's right. He could probably do my job if truth be told).
But this is more European, more of a London slant on the yelping art-punk of NYC. There are shades of the YYYs but only if you can imagine something like their Gold Lion tune, mixed with a Casio discobeat and tethered to a pushy sped-up bassline. And there in the centre, there's Tigs, toying with the audience, while dissecting an array of at odds emotions.
Her voice has an edge of danger about it; I'm not sure why. And you sense that there is something just a little mysterious about her (if you told me she trained as a spy in Russia, won a fashion design grant in New York and only ended up in London because she fell in love with a man on a Greyhound bus heading for LAX airport, I'd probably believe you).
She did, I know for a fact though, once say: "I want to make smart, literate music".
And weirdly, in this Mercury week, though musically miles apart, I can imagine Guy Garvey from Elbow saying the same thing.
CommentsSign in
You need to sign in to contribute to this page. If you're new to BBC Blogs, creating your membership is quick and easy.