Tight and feisty, with not a hair out of place, Jaded’s pop-punk songs with the sweet female voice were perfect for radio play and would be welcomed by the Avril Lavigne niche. Their new song ‘Take It Away’ had a pumping disco feel that kept feet tapping, with the added bonus of shining guitar solos, occasionally even behind his head, without a hint of Spinal Tap irony.
Mia would have more suited a dark, sexy, film soundtrack with their slow, heavy instrumental that opened the set. They combined Albarn-esque singing, a bit of strangulated megaphone craziness and their invisible fourth member playing pre-programmed synths that pointed to thumping Underworld or Massive Attack. They almost fitted into the nu-metal/emo genre but sometimes had a choppy, raw, garagey feel. Signed to small independent label Time Records, the big-time is theirs if they want it.
Flipcycle also used pre-programmed beats but instead of freeing them up to do other things, it trapped them into a mass-produced sound – heavy, angst-ridden emo like The Used. However, they were very tight and professional with string samples adding a slick edge and the singer, although too quiet in the mix, sounding like Tool’s James Maynard.
|
The Fades were what you’d expect from a band beginning with ‘the’. They were punky rock‘n’roll with ska moments, singing about their disaffected youth. With the right hair and the right clothes they weren't ‘Social Misfits’ as their song proclaimed, but cool. We liked their piece-of-shit-£30 guitar and punchy singing but when they really shone was during their more unusual, reggae moments like in ‘Your Say’, their first single, about ‘all the things you shouldn’t do but can’t stop doing’… They’re doing all the right things.
|
