The Sequins – The Death of Style
This really is a superb, spiky, joyful record. Phew! Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to this album as much as any all year, so it was with a little trepidation that I first sat down to listen to it. I was even more twitchy when it didn’t quite grab as instantly as their previous singles. Christ, surely it wasn’t going to be mediocre was it? Fortunately, no, it was more like that awkward moment on a first date where you have yet to relax.
A few listens in, I was hooked. Pure, bouncy enjoyment from start to finish, this is twelve shiny tracks of indie-pop glitter. The drums rattle through the record like a machine gun, Hywel Roberts voice is right out of the early 80s and the songs are overflowing with brilliantly choppy guitar. They lurch through the rhythms, stop and start and make you fucking dance – even me, seriously. They have an old-fashioned sound, primarily due to Roberts’ voice I think, but there are elements of ska and mod sounds in there too.
The only song I have heard before is, surprisingly, the superb French Way of Life. Neither Patients nor Nobody Dreams About Me provide any material for this album, which is perhaps the slight stylistic shift it took me a moment to get used to. I’m not about to get into an argument about what is and isn’t derivative. No music is created in a vacuum, nor is there a particular reason that new and innovative is better than well-executed re-tread. The first Libertines album is hugely derivative, stylistically nothing new and nonetheless utterly brilliant. This album, however, does sound new and different to me. I can hear a lot of the stuff they are working with in the songs, but nevertheless it definitely does sound fresh and exciting to my ears.
It makes me want to dance, it makes me want to fuck it all and get pissed and have a laugh, it makes me want to be a student again (don’t really understand that one, but it does), it makes me wish I was having a party just so I could play this album. And to top it off, it actually gets better as it goes on, too. The Usual Delights, Lets Go Drinking in the Afternoon and The Grass is Never Green are a superb 1-2-3 at the tail end of the album, so perhaps that’s why it took me a bit to get into. But for a brand new group to spit out twelve cracking songs like this, without even any recourse to their existing singles, is pretty bloody impressive.
I see the utter drivel that we are supposed to like, the dross in the NME, the Kate Nashes and Jack Penates of this world, and it’s all fucking streets behind this stuff. Do the people who decide what to pimp in pop culture just not like music very much? It bloody looks like it, because this lot spank the pants off anything I’ve heard on the radio for a very, very long while.
The Sequins – Treehouses
The Sequins – The Usual Delights
website | hype | buy the album
Make sure you go to the website and buy it direct from the label. Want to know why? Here’s a quote from an email I got from Tough Love Records:
Can’t stress enough how important it is that people buy through us. Not sure if youre aware or not, but if we sell the album for £8 in shops, we only get back about £2-2.50. That’s a pretty crippling return! So, yeah, basically any help you can provide on that front is well appreciated.
They’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make this look gorgeous as well, so click below for a peek at what you get for your £8. Bargain, I’d say.
I’m really looking forward to hearing it, really I am, but I’d just like to say that both Kate Nash and Jack Penate are actually very talented people!!! Lovely too….as is our Hywel…anyway, if you love them so much do something about it…hmmm….or maybe not…theyw ere in the NME once though
it was a glorious day 
xxx
Matthew, you are a true gentleman and a refined aesthete. Forever grateful for the kind words.
And really. he’s right. Please please please buy it from Tough Love directly if you have the option.
Hey, I’m just curious, now that you bring it up, but all of the music that gets written about with loads of exclamation points in the NME – is that the stuff that dominates radio in the UK? I ask because except for My Chemical Romance, none of the music printed about in the NME makes it to US radio until a few months after the fact. Wondering if the NME’s a tastemaker or just a big pop magazine…
Well not exactly. Kate Nash and Jack Penate and The View and The Rumblestrips and groups like that do get a fair amount of airplay, but mostly on Radio 1 and the truly dire XFM and occasionally even on 6Music as well.
The NME are under no circumstances a tastemaker though, just a microphone. They rarely ever get excited about anything that’s actually any good – actually that’s not fair, they get excited about everything, just so they don’t miss anything – but the ones they get most wound up about are almost universally poor.
The NME is basically pointless nowadays.
Yeah, I read it on occasion because I’m fascinated by how a music magazine can look like a tabloid, and because it tends to be an indicator of which British bands will make it into the US in the coming months. But a lot of the time, I’ll look up bands they gush about and they’re quite dreadful 9 times out of 10.
The View are popular there? There was a small period where our “indie” radio station over here was playing loads of them and then they sort of fizzled out, I think because all the visa issues kept them from returning to tour ever again. Ah well.
China, think yourself lucky! The View aren’t massive over here really. Like so much of the NME stuff their hype burned very brightly for a while but the music didn’t cut the mustard when exposed to the air.
It’s true…most of these bands aren’t as big as you actually think….anyway enough of the NME…think for yourselves…Kate Nash is a very talented girl and if you’d ever sat down and listened to her play (in front of you and not at a mid-sized venue) you’d actually realise how very talented she is….very captivating too….and Caroline’s a Victim released through moshi-moshi before Universal came along is a fucking great record! Anywyay…enough of this….really, it’s all nonsense….if you want to see a good Pop Band go and see Winners….I don’t know why I just said that, now….back to The Sequins
They’re just wonderful aren’t they 
x
I’ve actually heard that about KT Tunstall as well. Apparently, despite her horribly over-produced middle class dinner party records, when she just plays live and acoustic she can be really rather good. Not that I’d have any experience of this of course.
And, erm, yes. Yes they really are!