The Sequins – The Risky Woods
I’ve been a fan of the Sequins since, rather annoyingly, about a week after their last Edinburgh gig three years ago. Since then I’ve bought a couple of excellent singles and their frantic, fantastic debut album The Death of Style, released on Tough Love Records a couple of years ago.
A couple of lineup changes have ensued, and the band are no longer working with Tough Love, and almost inevitably the sound has changed a little as well. This EP is more harmony and guitar-based than The Death of Style, which was something of an explosion of frenetic machine gun rhythms, whereas The Risky Woods is probably closer to their earlier material.
Perhaps because of that less demanding approach, this took me a little longer to get into than I maybe expected, but having done so I find I am really enjoying this. It’s got a lot of the same theatrically preposterous characteristics which so endeared the Sequins to me in the first place, from the occasionally slightly Queen-esque guitars of All That We Know, to the downright surreal Offside & Beautiful, which is presumably the world’s first gay football anthem.
I suppose I’d say that under all the really nice, slightly rock ‘n’ rolly indie guitar riffs, The Sequins are basically just a little bit over the top, and that’s one of the things I like best about them. They’re exaggerated, and a little bit larger than life, but they never ever let it get to the stage where you might think of them as a novelty band.
Another interesting aspect to this is that this record is out on Indie mp3 Records, another example of a label being a blogger, a promoter… pretty much everything music-related actually, rather than just a single entity like a traditional label. I like this model, because hearing someone talk about music is a pretty consistent way to sniff out who is a sincere music fan and who is just chancing it because they heard such and such a band might be cool at the moment.
The Sequins – Space Travel in Your Blood
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I know I am easily seduced by slightly more mainstream stuff, but this is my favourite thing The Sequins have done. I’ve just listened to it through twice and every track is enjoyable. I agree it’s the ‘going a bit over the top’ that sets them apart simply because the rasp in his voice means he can sell it convincingly.
They’ve lifted the title of this track from the lyrics to Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones.
Now there’s a fantastic track.
I don’t know Ben, No-on Ever Dreams About Me, Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning… they’ve done some really good stuff.
Not that I don’t rate this of course.
I suppose a more accurate way of saying it would be after I heard ‘No One Ever Dreams About Me’, this is closer to the album I really wanted them to release than the other stuff of theirs I’ve heard.
Sorry, I hate when I make minimal sense…
Well the actual record took me a fair while to adjust to for just that reason. I did come to love it though, although it’s a bit of a rollercoaster.