Despite the fact that this is their first gig, Smiling Pirates have already been through a few band names – they’re billed on the posters as Neon Candlelight (shrug), and before that they were allegedly Kaleidovision (retch). But, call them what you want, what they really are is a mess, albeit a promising and likable one. They start out with big blocky piano parts and reverby guitar lines, an approximation of Keane and Sigur Ros at the bottom of a flooded mineshaft, but from there they swiftly move to their one discernible rhythm, the dark disco canter of many a band with Joy Division and Gang Of Four in their influence list. They’re a little like a Tesco Value version of Doves, and, although starting and finishing aren’t performing concepts they’ve really nailed, some of the middles are quite good. Their songs are like budget Jaffa Cakes, in that sense.
Promise is on display here, as well as a kind of affable unpretentiousness that wins them points, but there are a couple of issues Smiling Pirates could do with addressing: a) the drummer, who throws himself at his skins with a frantic and barely rhythmic desperation during the crescendos, thus looking like he’s playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon (or Eddie Kidd’s Jump Challenge, for those who grew up with the BBC B), and b) the fact that the vocalist probably wants to be likened to Ian Curtis, but in actuality looks like a man trying not to make eye contact with the drunk skinhead at the bus stop, and has a voice like a bored supermarket announcer, even whilst his songs collapse around his ears. Clean up on aisle 3.
Londoners Libelula (it’s Spanish for “Dragonfly”, apparently, and has nothing to do with female anatomy, despite a heckle) have lots of differently shaped keyboards and some excellent synth-drums and create a humming pop buzz, roughly equivalent to The Human League with contemporary disco dolly vocals, or a Phildickian timeslip collaboration between the early OMD and already forgotten hitmakers Kosheen. The effect is rather lovely, due in no small part to Sarah Villaraus’ adaptable, but not overcooked, diva vocals, and her nice golden boots; in fact, at first there was a fear that the impressive vocals would be too emotive for the sparsely robotic technopop around which they twined, but then they played “Mountains”, a lithe Goldfrappian iceskate around chiming metallophone loops, and our final doubts were put to rest. They even have a dark minded tune that recalls the clumsy breakbeats of “Charley” era Prodigy, and even Kickin Vinyl hardcore mainstay, The Scientist. It’s heartening to see an act with unashamed commercial intent, who also have some clear ability with a tune, and enough ideas to keep miserable scribbling journos happy. Best of British to you, boys and girls.
Talking of commercial impact, Spring Offensive are a band who look as though they are only months away from an adulatory V festival set and an NME cover story, and they’re simply playing a debut EP launch at The Jericho. They’re a tightly-drilled, rousing indie band, with tiny puzzle pop inflections, whose greatest strength is their fluent and witty use of rhythms (here’s a band who can make a three beat cowbell feel funkier than most overweight soul acts doing the rounds). The vocalist boasts a strong voice, but like so many current bands he belts things out in a yearning, fists aloft style that sounds like he’s in the audience singing along to his favourite tunes, as opposed to performing a song, and when the rest of the band come in on backing vocals they may as well be singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”. We think they have better vocal arrangements in them somewhere, but for now, this egalitarian terrace singalong style at least sounds completely contemporary.
However, underneath all the high guitar strap Foals twiddles, and clever rhythmic tics, Spring Offensive are a thinly disguised folk pop outfit, chock full of bolshily literate songs: something akin to a Stornoway who can talk to girls. And if lovely indie lilt “The Cable Routine” is their “Unfaithful” and an almost Chumbawambafied pecuniphagous* ditty about a man consuming the contents of his own wallet is their “We Are The Battery Human”, sadly they have a “Good Fish Guide”, in the shape of “1066”, an unfunny retelling of the battle of Hastings.
So, drop the second rate student humour. Drop the homemade T-shirts that make you look like a Why Don’t You version of The Manics. From thereon in there’s no need to change anything, Spring Offensive, as you are a wonderful, euphoric, twitchily danceable new Oxford band, and we wish you all the success in the world.
*It means “Money eating”; or at least it should, there’s obviously no such word.