PRINGLE: ONCE YOU POP YOU CAN'T STOP
I went to see Slummin' Angels last week, who aren't Slummin' Angels anymore. They're now called Bleech, which is a surprisingly good new moniker for the east London trio who make a brooding sort of confrontational grunge pop. They could equally be Babes In Toyland's lost support group or a band who wouldn't be out of place sharing a bill with The Subways.
But the name change is interesting - suggested to them by Andy Ross, their new manager and one time kingpin of Food Records. Ross, I like to think of as an old-school A&R man who, rather than worrying about the numbers of hits the group are receiving on MySpace, worries about things like songs and perception. The nitty-gritty.
This is the man who allegedly used to have a book of useful (and unused) band names which could be employed whenever a group fell into his office claiming to be called something like The Lost Sisters Of Cheryl Cole. The man, in fact, who persuaded Seymour to change their name to Blur and less successfully The Contenders - a band who featured Gem Archer now of Oasis - to become Whirlpool.
Our relationship with band's names is weird though, don't you think? Would Travis have been so easy to swallow if they'd still been known as Glass Onion...and would Kelly Jones have got to hang out, sipping cocktails with the World's Rock Elite (which, judging by the papers he's quite good at) if The Stereophonics had forged on under their original, and terrifically cumbersome, name Tragic Love Company?
On long trips back to London after DJing at places like Treforest Poly or the Frog & Whippet in Stoke myself and my friend Liam used to stay awake on the motorway by playing the John Peel band name game. All you have to do is come up with names of groups who would have - in the glory days - been granted a session on the Peel show (particular favourites included the fictional American lo-fi peddlers Tiny Desk Unit, Belgium dance terrorists AXE... and on one especially dark night near Leicester Forrest services, the splendid sounding Hexagonal Pensioner. Feel free to add your own below).
All of which brings us to George Pringle. The name sounds like it should be attached to someone who's served at Bradford & Bingley for 30 long years before being eased out by the Credit Crunch. Or possibly a respectably dressed football hooligan whose main aim in life is summoning up his troops for an afternoon of opposition-baiting.
But no. Not only is George of the opposite sex, she's also responsible for this week's Single Of The Week (or rather next week's as it's released on the 17th).
Pringle describes herself as a 'diseuse', a female entertainer who performs monologues, which is a decent start, but it barely scratches at the surface of the new record LCD I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down. Built over a dry-sounding drum machine rhythm and gorgeously flighty keyboards, Pringle sounds unnervingly like an annoyed version of the girl from Flying Lizards on their long-forgotten TV single.
It's a good example, musically, of less is more - the sparse electro-backing leaving Pringle to wrestle with the untimely death of her social life while apportioning blame where necessary (and trust me, she has an unnervingly savage tongue near the end). It is the type of record the Mute label would have been thrilled by at the start of the 80s, but at the same time it is very now.
It feels like there's a whole wave of female DIY electro stars waiting to break in 2009, not least Blackpool's Little Boots (a guest on my 6Music show this week) and south London's La Roux. But having said that Pringle is less disco driven than LB and less polished than LR. The Pringle single is probably truer to the slightly awkward sounds of the New York scene and likeably rough around the edges.
I've played it five times already this morning and it's as mysterious and unapproachable as it was the first time I heard it. A truly great, risky and infectious pop record.
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Hi Steve,
Here's something you might appreciate:
Bleech performing as part of the new Earwax Television Show @ MyLiveSession (Live performance starts 00:21:20 in!) ->
http://www.mylivesession.com/recordings.php
Earwax Television video edits ->
http://uk.youtube.com/earwaxtelevision
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