Tag: punker

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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