It seems I wrote something not very nice about an unspecified band a while ago and their lives are now in tatters. They can neither sleep nor eat, are scared to travel in lifts alone and can t go upstairs in buses anymore. Their sex lives are ruined, neighbours point at them in the streets and little kids hide when they see them coming.
All very sad really, but that s unfortunately what happens to bands who invite your opinion when what they really want is your unconditional approval. While gratuitous favourable comment is as scarce round these parts as gratuitous insults, there s a lesson to be learned here. Let s face it, any band whose career/lives/future is in danger of being destroyed by any one person s opinion hadn t really much going for them to begin with crocheting might be a more attractive career option. But can you imagine any of the early legends of rock n roll getting upset because somebody said something they didn t really like? Would a youthful and rebellious Chuck Berry have bothered his ass writing poison pen letters when there was some fresh booty to check out? Hardly.
Of course there was that Jerry Lee Lewis bloke. So maybe I should be a little careful in here or somebody might send somebody round with the new Fuktifino demo.
Which, by some extraordinary coincidence, I now see someone has done. Fuktifino are a band of five piece bad-assers from Galway who apparently learned to play Pink Floyd s Wish You Were Here album before they got sense and turned to writing their own stuff which is as close to the Floyd as the far side of the moon. And it s a splendidly raucous affair full of buzzdrill guitars, sneering vocals and drums played by four-by-twos. They are all experts at doing very rude, a sort of Korn without the technology, but with lashings of passion and energy. Mouth , with it s rampaging chorus of you re fucking sick is as good a cure for hangover as you ll find that side of the Shannon.
In spirit they come as close to the radical, angry punkery of The Radiators and that was decades ago. But is there a market still for this? Well I m Fuktifuno.
After that, the melancholy introspection of Rumour Den came along like a mug of cocoa. With their three-track self-funded CD single Under A Cloud , this Antrim band walk a fine line between acoustic guitar-based indie rock and a brand of commercial pop not a million miles from Moody Blues territory. Arguably this artefact goes way beyond being a demo at all. The title track is a snazzily produced, infectious slowish ballad and it deserves to be a hit of some sort. The equally down-tempo and moody Guilty Days proves that the opener was no mere fluke and the closer Slumber , with it s subtle sinuous strings, nails the message down beyond argument. It might stir things up if the lads moved up a gear once in a while, but this is an impressive debut by any standards.
In AJ Gilmore, Rumour Den have a natural vocalist who carries a song with confidence and a band who know when to leave out the kitchen sink. Too good to be regarded as a demo, this should be in the record racks.
Since it s borrowed from the Babylonian goddess of sexual attraction, their name might bring cries of new age alert , but Dublin-based Ishtar are firmly entrenched in a contemporary rock groove with pop overtones. In the two years since their inception they ve racked up some impressive gigging and it shows in the assured way they handle the material.
But while songs like Mirror Ball and Siren are precisely assembled, one still can t help feeling that while they ve got all the ingredients, including some decent harmonies from Alan McDonnell and Ciaran Byrne, there s no icing on the Ishtar cake, nothing to make you feel that these particular tracks as they stand will do much to make the band stick out from the crowd. That said, this is a solid first demo and should encourage the band to move on to the next step in the programme. They re on the right track but there s work to be done.
Jayel is John Leech (J-L, gettit?) and he s from Kildare. His demo was entirely home-produced on a Roland recording unit and it augurs well for his future as a singer-songwriter. He has an attractive vulnerable voice which can not only carry a tune but can express the right emotion without going into Brian Kennedy overload.
It s Easy is a tasty slow ballad with some nice electric guitar to give it a neat twist at the end. While Talk To You and Have Some More are both slowies (Is this National Ballad Week or something?), the latter only moves up a gear as it progresses. All three songs suggest that with the right application it s only a matter time before JL delivers the heavy goods.
Lesson of the fortnight: When writing a poison pen letter please remember that bollox has
two l s.