In a way it’s more intriguing when a cover band sends an original song than one already producing originals. For if original bands can sometimes be critical of the desire of pub venues to value cover bands over them, yeah, your average cover band is heeding the call for their bread and butter, but are often equally passionate about music, and turn to recording some of their own wares. And when they do it’s natural to pay homage to the particular style they play in, as guaranteed, that’s their calling and influence…..
Certainly true of Marlborough-based Static Moves, who released a debut single today, full of the retrospective energy they’re celebrated for at live shows. They turned a cold February night at the Three Crowns in Devizes into a volcano, as they regularly warm crowds at a plethora of local venues with a repertoire of welcomed new wave to Britpop covers.
The concern is that the raw energy doesn’t transfer to the recording, but you have no worries here; it’s the dog’s bollocks. Crawl Back, as they’ve called it, belts out an accomplished potential anthem of precisely what they’re loved for on the circuit. A matured and modern indie-rock spliced “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, with a carefree attitude of the Merton Parkas. It’s got the new wave mod-punk crossover of the early eighties splashed across it like two-tone trousers and Fred Perry T-shirts never went out of fashion. And it didn’t, because you can hear its influence crying out for attention in contemporary indie-rock bands, ergo, the appeal of Crawl Back reaches beyond nostalgic middle-aged to youths today.
With a theme of the tail between your legs sympathy vote, forgiveness is key when you still fancy the wrongdoer, forget the three minute hero, this weighs in at four and a half, and it waits for no man to catch up with it. In a way the length of this whopper is more indicative of modern punk bands, but you cannot help but imagine you’re at a musky gig in 1981, it costs two quid to get in, you’ve only got one and half a packet of fruit Polos to trade with the glue-sniffers hanging outside drinking tins of Tennents!
Static Moves promises more of their, indeed, moreish raw energy captured, and if there’s more in the pipeline, an EP would be welcomed, an album worth would be knockout, because they could, and should, slip this into their covers set and no one would be any the wiser it wasn’t an album track from Modern English or a nineties influenced crew like The Coral or Supergrass; it’s on that level of excellence too, and that’s why they’re all over our local circuit like Dr Martens were in 1981.
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