I previously mentioned London's Stricken City when I wrote about the Big Pink a couple weeks back and I'm getting more and more excited about this rising band, especially in the absence of the sorely missed Long Blondes, whom they remind me of a little.
Self-proclaimed "mistakists," this four-piece have a completely different agenda than the LBs less glam and structured, more art school and spontaneous as Stricken City seem a lot more fluid and freeform in their songwriting and execution, something that has brought them comparisons to, oh, about hundreds of other bands. But the funny thing is that in Stricken City's effervescent, hurky-jerky pop, which they describe as "dance music... [that's] just a little too awkward to dance to," you can hear traces of the Slits, Bow Wow Wow, Delta 5, Young Marble Giants, the Sugarcubes, Orange Juice, etc.; it's like they decided to form the band using a recipe book.
The new wavy spasms of former single "Tak O Tak" first caught my ear in the summer but it's their new single, "Lost Art" (out November 17 through Blue Flowers), with its scattered, Bow Wow Wow-ee tom intro, melodically stacked guitar jangle, singer Rebecca Raa's elegant utterance and an ever-shifting rhythm that's, yeah, awkward to say the least. But it's songs like these that make for the most entertaining dance floor subjects.
Download Stricken City's "Lost Art"
Self-proclaimed "mistakists," this four-piece have a completely different agenda than the LBs less glam and structured, more art school and spontaneous as Stricken City seem a lot more fluid and freeform in their songwriting and execution, something that has brought them comparisons to, oh, about hundreds of other bands. But the funny thing is that in Stricken City's effervescent, hurky-jerky pop, which they describe as "dance music... [that's] just a little too awkward to dance to," you can hear traces of the Slits, Bow Wow Wow, Delta 5, Young Marble Giants, the Sugarcubes, Orange Juice, etc.; it's like they decided to form the band using a recipe book.
The new wavy spasms of former single "Tak O Tak" first caught my ear in the summer but it's their new single, "Lost Art" (out November 17 through Blue Flowers), with its scattered, Bow Wow Wow-ee tom intro, melodically stacked guitar jangle, singer Rebecca Raa's elegant utterance and an ever-shifting rhythm that's, yeah, awkward to say the least. But it's songs like these that make for the most entertaining dance floor subjects.
Download Stricken City's "Lost Art"
