Released 20th April, Dance To The Radio

To celebrate its fiftieth release, Dance to the Radio has announced the release of four 12 inch singles. This is volume one and, frankly, it’s a rum bunch. First up, and proving beyond doubt that all the good band names have been used up, Wonderswan  hit us with their debut release “Hey Nature”. The music is likeable DIY indie rock, but the whole thing comes unstuck as soon as the singer starts serenading us with his take on the Pete Doherty Smack Voice TM. You know the kind of voice – wayward, thin, nasal and phlegmy, only vaguely acquainted with the concept of tunefulness. It’s such a shame that so many of our nation’s  bright indie hopefuls now regard sounding like you’re begging for change as a valid vocal style.


Leeds three-piece Broadcast Society, who here contribute “Behind Your Back”, want to be U2. Unfortunately, this means they face the predicament of all indie-boy upstarts who secretly harbour a desire to play enormo-stadiums while wearing cowboy boots and holding conference calls with world leaders where they share their ideas on erasing Third World debt. The predicament is this: the indie scriptures (written by a pissed-up Mark E Smith in a Salford chippy circa 1981) state it is a cardinal sin to display too much, or in fact any, ambition beyond getting in NME and having your single played by Steve Lamacq. So Broadcast Society have hit on the same solution as many a guitar band before them – they’ve settled for sounding a lot like early U2, when Bono’s loftiest ambition was earning enough to get his mullet re-feathered.  So “Behind Your Back” sounds like “I Will Follow” and that’s not a bad thing.  Broadcast Society should be fine if they continue on this path until album number three, when they can legitimately start phasing in the tasseled waistcoats and songs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, if they ever doubt the necessity of their subterfuge, they need only take a long look at the giant self-deluding cock that is Johnny Borrell and feel the blood chill in their veins.

Track three is the fabulously named “E = MC Hammer” by the not-so-fabulously named Pulled Apart by Horses. It’s full-on grunty, hairy gonad metal, and is probably fine if you like that kind of thing.Rounding things off is Cale Parks’ remix of “What a Drag” by Bear Hand, which would be lovely if wasn’t for the singers weedy smackhead voice. In summary then: Smack = No.

 

www.dancetotheradio.com

Posted In Single Reviews, Apr 19 2009. Words - Richard