Thursday 13 December 2007

ERR ... LOOK TO SCOTLAND, TOO!

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Glasgow band Make Model’s new single ‘The Was’ is everything you could want in a twenty-first century alternative rock song - forward-looking melodic guitar music wonderfully free of the ruinous effects of both fashionistic frippery and cliché-driven conservatism.

Hung shimmeringly around a gorgeous harp sample and driven by a neat brass section and a vigorous rhythmic underbelly, ‘The Was’ manages to sound magical and humane without ever plunging the depths of a Belle and Sebastian-like cutesiness. The vocals are virtuously esoteric and un-egotistical, and there is a pervasive sense of a heart-felt communal project underlying the laudably adventurous arrangement.

This is romantic-futuristic folk-rock with one eye on America, but it is also more to the point a marvellous and affirmative indication that British indie might in the near future be able to drag itself out of the commercial, insular pit it currently inhabits.

Such optimism puts me bang in the mood for Christmas.

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