Tag: indie punk

LilyPetals Debut EP

One of many young indie bands which impressed me at Bradford Roots Festival, and proof there’s more than the name suggests at The Wiltshire Music Centre’s winter convention of local music, Bristol-based LilyPetals released their debut EP this week….

Firing on all cylinders, there’s five three minute heroes and one slightly longer tune on this impressive introduction to an equally-gendered and equally promising four-piece. Contemporary themes imploded by two fierce opening tracks, Currently Unavailable and, particularly, We Want More, arch a punk flavour of punk’s heyday; and I like that a lot! There’s wailing guitars, echoing chorus lines, and emotion pouring out.

If we’re talking emotion though, the tempo lessens for the third tune, That’s What You Said to Me, proving LilyPetals is no one trick pony. It’s a rolling ballad, with a euphoric element akin to a rock classic. If this tune will raise your eyebrow, note, Playwright reverbs with passion and fire, there’s almost shards of glam rock meeting gothic in there too. But LilyPetals have mastered the hook, leading to a bridge via a finger click, is clever and beguiling stuff.

The four minute tune is the penultimate one, and it just drives from the intro. Break Your Mind is perhaps a magnum opus to date for this band, though I highly suspect from the concentrated and tight compositions of all these tunes, we’re going to be moving onto even better stuff from them in the near future. In principle then, this is encouraging, and it feels like punk is saved for a new generation in their indie passion. This is to Bowling For Soup what Reef is to The Rolling Stones, but the potential for improvement is gapping in their hands; the canvas here is ripped and ready to rock!

It finishes with Spaceman, mate, check this out, the hook is a sinker, it has all the elements of a classic, and, as we’ve seen with bands like The Radio Makers, punk rock can evoke modern generations, and punk can live on through them. LilyPetals, arguably ironic namesake, yet the fervour is at a blossoming point, and this is a great and lengthy EP, verging on an album, and album worthy of your perusal.  

LilyPetals LinkTree

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M3G, De-Anchored

At the end of last year Chippenham singer-songwriter M3G released the single Rooks. I felt it set her bar at a whole new higher level.…

Ready for RowdeFest?

Not long now, for Rowdefest! Which, as the name suggests, is in Rowde, near Devizes, on Saturday 30th May, and is a free, community spirited…

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All Cat’s Eyes for Nothing Rhymes With Orange’s New Single

Firstly, to clear up any confusion, as I know I was, a little, and I also accept it doesn’t take much these days, Devizes’ finest musical export since The Hoax, Nothing Rhymes With Orange will play a homecoming gig at The Three Crowns on the Friday 24th June, and not as previously advertised on the Saturday….

Reason being is symbolic of the monumental progress this young band is making nationally; on the Saturday they’re at the third heat of this year’s Pilton Stage party in Glastonbury, the winners of which will go on to share the stage with a major headliner in front of 8,000 people on Worthy Farm in September, that’s all!

Here at Devizine Towers we’ve got all fingers and toes crossed for the guys, it’s a tough cookie, but we look forward to catching up with them on Friday. If you need confirmation of my claims of their blossoming progress, check out the latest single, Cats Eyes, which they launched today, and you will realise I’m not making this up; shits got real.

If eyes are a window to the soul, and cats are sly, this bountifully bodacious banger is the wild romantic ride of Born to Run, with an nonchalant and stylised ring of youth. The narrative is elementary though noteworthy, the post-festival blues of confusing mental bedlam over a fleeting romance, and coming to terms with it all when homebound; it’s convincing, I get the inkling they’ve been there.

Yet it’s the professionalism of a lively style defined here which impresses, having watched these Devizes lads progress from the levels of fun yet amateur punky knockouts like Chow For Now. And it’s all contained within a relatively short space of time whereby each single is a moonwalk to initiating a universal style.

If the early singles like Chow and Manipulation fuelled a local fanbase of peers, Cats Eyes will play the same part in enthusing the big kahunas of the music industry, and if not, I want an inquiry as to why not. These songs they’ll undoubtedly look back on as stepping stones, yet while there’s a modification to a growing professional trend which sounds to me retrospective eighties indie-pop, the like I hail bands like Talk in Code for reverbating, their rawer punker influences aren’t completely saturated here. It doesn’t feel like selling out, it feels like a natural progression to a permeating and accomplished sound, which will equally not disappoint fans but amass newer ones too.

If we’ve always been impressed with Nothing Rhymes With Orange’s insatiable ability to energetically harmonise, it’s evident here in abundance too. They’ve mastered the hook, and taking it to a bridge, they detonate the pop formula with indie goodness, something which only gets better each time; Cat’s Eyes makes another positive leap forward.

The band have been consistently gigging across the South West at festivals and niche music venues since they met in a secondary school, and have been championed by many local radio stations including BBC Introducing who have featured two of their tracks. With a summer tour announced they’ll be playing a range of headline and support gigs right across Wiltshire and on to Hampshire, Bristol, Reading and London. 

But while it’s great to see them heading out, you know when they arrive back in Devizes, the party is on, and fans will be chanting their lyrics back to them; the highest accolade aside a blinding review from me, naturally!!

LinkTree HERE

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Radium on Liddington Hill

Swindon-based adrenaline pumping five-piece Liddington Hill released their first EP for three years, and Radium is highly radioactive….. For most on the North Wessex Downs,…

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Nothing Rhymes With Orange Release New Single Monday, on Monday!

Rapping on this today, because Devizes young heroes Nothing Rhymes With Orange unleash their latest catchy banger, Monday, tomorrow, which is coincidently or not, a Monday, and we all know Mondays are a load of old tosh and if we had a half decent government Mondays would be banned by now, and being it’s Monday I doubt I’ll get time to mention it then, because it’s Monday, which is kind of what this indie-punk treat is about…..

I could direct the band’s attention to Smiley Lewis, who prior to The Boomtown Rats, New Order and The Bangles, had a single whinging about Mondays way back in 1954, and note the though the concept is far from new, Nothing Rhymes With Orange are not only the first to reference a Greggs steak bake in a song about Monday, but also, Smiley Lewis or none of the above ever drooled on their mate while sleeping on the bus, as far as history books reveal.

The band tells us the tune has “more of an indie-punk sound, a step away from the softer indie-rock of previous tracks and we’re exploring this genre with more songs of a similar style.” Though the subtle difference will, and does already, encourage the live audience into a frenzy at the bridge, to consider such may not be as commercially viable is to note it was the track picked up and played by BBC Introducing this month. Can’t blame them really, it’s a brilliant tune.

“The inspiration for our new single, ‘Monday’, came about when we were chatting about the ‘Monday morning dread’,  when you wake up tired and everything goes wrong,” they explain, though you could effectively walk into a lamppost on any other day, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be on a Monday, but I’m afraid, when it comes to pastries, you get what you pay for, boys; believe me, I’m something of an expert on them.

Image: Kiesha Films.

Timeworn romance topics can be a stable subject, but something which drops in some light-hearted humour it’s more often than not a chicken dinner, particularly within their genre. I pray you’ll recall Wheatus for Teenage Dirtbag rather than A Little Respect, or Foundations of Wayne for Stacey’s Mom rather than Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart.

It sure is a great tune, with a lot of work gone into it, despite the festival season in full flight, and the band have certainly been gathering appeal and pushing new geographical boundaries, with 30K streams across all platforms. Still to come, they’re live on hometown Fantasy Radio from The Crown in Devizes on 24th August, and a couple of summer festivals remain, Honey Fest and Box Rocks. They also play The Pump on 1st September, The Lamb, Marlborough the next day, their self promoted gig at Devizes The Corn Exchange on the 10th, and its onto Moles in Bath, and we’re looking at 15th December for them to make their debut at the trusty Southgate. 

Pre-save Monday, for Monday, HERE!

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