LET’S DANCE!
A round-up of new British bands who are, like, good.

Over the past few months I’ve seen or otherwise come into contact with quite a few genuinely excellent new British bands, and every time I mean to get round to tell you about them and don’t get round to it, which is quite criminal of me, cos this is exactly the kind of inspiring malarky I should be going out of my way to encourage, goddamnit.

I now have enough of a backlog to actually put together a fairly lengthy round-up of various kids and , er, non-kids who are out there kicking up a worthwhile storm. Most will probably be old news to close followers of what we may loosely call the ‘good British bands’ scene - or possibly the ‘underground’ if you wanna get pretentious about it, put on yr shades and look mean (and who doesn’t every now and then?). But I realise there are those of you who’ve got better things to do than spend your evenings in loud, dimly lit caverns, communicating in a kind of incomprehensible cliquey argot and routinely getting deafened by any gang of local losers who’ve got a fuzzbox and don’t know how to use it, all in the vain expectation of occasionally encountering a group like the ones outlined below. So hopefully I can do those of you less than enamoured by small time gig ritual a favour here by pointing you straight at the gravy, so to speak.

They’re in alphabetical order to avoid accusations of favouritism, so if any of these groups are playing anywhere near you in future, you’d be well advised to check them out, or just buy their records or whatever.

PART ONE (A - K):

Big Joan

Thus far, I’ve only had the pleasure of hearing one recording from Big Joan, on the 'Noise Annoys' compilation from Farm Girl Records (also featuring several other band son this list), but boy is it a stormer!
Gutsy, authentically shredded female vox, shrieking no-wave guitar demolition, a rough, bluesy swing and good dose of unmitigated hardcore noise violence... It sounds kinda like Mars eating the Geraldine Fibbers as Roland S. Howard looks on in dismay. And if that means anything to you, I guess you probably already own it. I’m unable to comment on the size of their hands, but I’ll set up with you, Big Joan. http://www.bigjoan.com/

Blood Red Shoes

Now how about this for a kick-ass recipe for a band; take one of those excitable shouty guys who used to front the much missed Cat on Form, and get him letting loose on drums. Add a mean, ice-cool guitar-slinging young lady. He hammers the drums crippled octopus style like a wide-eyed innocent who just saw the face of god in a Lightning Bolt record. She coolly throws out relentless idiot-savant riffage that puts me in mind of nothing so much as, well, Winnebago Deal, if you’re familiar with them. Headbangable! And they both yell through short, spiky call and response vocal routines straight outta Delta 5 or the Au Pairs….. quick, stoppy-starty and straight to the point with loads of that old Cat on Form mania showing through, but also ROCK and FUN and LET’S DANCE.
What can possibly go wrong?
www.catonform.co.uk/bloodredshoes/

Hookers Green No # 1

Hookers Green’s debut album “On How the Illustrious Captain Moon Won the War for Us” stands as a strange and promising bedroom music project, but it’s in a live setting that these five shy kids from Aberdeen really find their feet, and the results, which I’ve been lucky enough to witness twice thus far, are little short of astonishing. Open-minded, ambitious, and slightly crazed, these boys have about the most joyful, instinctive instrumental interplay I’ve seen in years, swinging wildly between a multitude of styles and musical ideas, occasionally touching base with thrashy art-punk spazz-out, Flaming Lips / Spiritualised style cosmic pop or death disco rhythm workouts before diving straight into the deep-end of a kind of staggering, nameless indie kid jazz whose combination of highly energised, off-kilter force, freewheeling improvisational virtuosity and jaw-dropping psychic idea sparkin’ reminds me of nothing so much as prime ‘50s bebop. “Fucking hell..” as audience members have been heard to remark out loud in the silence following the group’s first song. One of the most talented and exciting live bands in the country right now, no fucking question. www.hookersgreen.com


Hunting Lodge

With a sound resembling what might happen if grizzly bears formed a band, Hunting Lodge (residing half in Bristol, half in Southampton) have the air of a frightening force unleashed, their name already spoken in hushed tones. Whilst the similarities are clearly accidental rather than deliberate, the oft-cited Birthday Party comparison is apt, conveying both the chaotic, unhinged violence of the Hunting Lodge experience and the more lithe, perverse structures underlying their aggression. Rather than shock therapy goth throwbacks though, Hunting Lodge remain as unadorned and down to earth as it’s possible to get, their style birthed in the mud and constipated filth of British outsider hardcore, sharing aesthetic territory with the intimidating likes of Penthouse, Bilge Pump and Part Chimp. And in Seth Cooke, they have the most perfect drummer a rock band could ask for, his awe-inspiring battering giving a gleeful joy to proceedings that prevents the band’s catastrophic racket from ever collapsing into nihilistic stupor as the rest of the band stomp across whatever space is available to them, axes raised and eyes closed as if imagining themselves in combat with invisible beasts... Rah! Debut album ‘Energy Czar’ out now; http://www.hunting-lodge.org/