Song, by Toad

Some more hot unsigned action on Song, by Toad: this time Norwich’s Bambi Get Over It.  Norwich?  Apparently.  They describe themselves as folk merged with rockabilly indie.  I’m not one for directly quoting PR emails particularly, but there’s not much way around this description.  Perhaps if an old American folk band went completely fucking nuts.  A really white folk band though, because there’s none of the gospel or blues you might associate with American folk music.  Sim Eldem has a quavering, really punk rock voice though, so I guess this is where terms like anti-folk, much maligned on the Pages of Toad recently, might come into play.

I’d imagine their live shows must be something to behold.  Even recorded, it sounds like George is going to break his mandolin – the pace and rhythm of some of it is ferocious. Listening to the stuff they’ve sent me I do find a couple of less successful songs, but they’ve only been going since October 2007, so it’s bloody impressive that they sound as good as they do, frankly.  Bands generally take a while to settle into a proper form, but these guys seem to have got their shit together impressively quickly.

So another case where I don’t want to fawn excessively, and I have never seen them live which is always a hindrance, but there is more than enough quality in these excellent demos that I can confidently state that this lot definitely, definitely cut the Toad’s mustard.  I watch their particular space with considerable anticipation.

Bambi Get Over It – Bad Man
Bambi Get Over It – Jeanie

I’ve just done a slot on indie disco for DC’s radio show The Waiting Room, going out tonight from 10pm to midnight UK time on Error FM, and to be honest, I was stumped. What the fuck is indie disco anyway? If it’s what indie kids listen to in discos then it’s basically just the more upbeat indie stuff, surely? And if it’s indie mixed with disco, then, erm, well I’m not sure I’m the right man to be asking.

Kittens Ablaze get close at times. Strobelight could hold its own with the best of them on dance floors full of polite, shuffling young men in battered trainers and colourful t-shirts. For the most part, however, this EP is pretty much straight down the line indie rock. The recordings sound pretty thin and distant, but it’s hard to tell if that’s an aesthetic choice or simply a result of it being a demo. Raw might be a better way of describing it.

Whatever the reason, it works really well with the music if you ask me, so I hope that the engineer on the album they’re recording at the moment doesn’t try and make them try and sound Big all of a sudden. They’re versatile too. The aforementioned Strobelight could easily have issued from Toad favourites The 63 Crayons. Later stuff however gets into sort of scratchy, atonal indie territory, and at other times Jenny Bress and Michelle Young’s strings raise the mood to a deliciously tense pitch similar to that heard in some of the UK’s alternative folk scene at the moment.

Funnily enough Government Romance, the opener, is my least favourite. The pace never quite picks up, and as a result the song never quite ignites. For the rest of it, though, there’s no such danger. It’s full of ideas, bristling with confidence, and for all I don’t love every last moment perhaps, it’s the sort of really promising demo that should have any record exec pricking up his ears. Were they not mostly idiots, of course.

Kittens Ablaze – Strobelight
Kittens Ablaze – Evangeline