Another Form of Relief

It’s been a little while since we had any twee pop again, so today is the turn of The Besties, a band I have loved for a couple of years now but have never had the chance to write about properly. Coming from New York (what is it about the northeast and twee?), I always thought that the band was a three-piece, although the photographic evidence above appears to disagree.

The Besties describe themselves as “60s girl groups dry humping 90s pop punk”, which is something I think we can all agree that more bands should aspire to. They certainly pull it off too, the sweet female harmonies mixing perfectly with the often shambolic musical sound that supports it. Their last album, Singer, was full of pop gems, from Prison Song to Sweden Song to Pirate Song to Zombie Song. I think they really like the word ’song’.

The Besties’ new album, Home Free, will be released on November 11.

I know I didn’t do a ‘Way Back Whensday’ feature yesterday. I haven’t abandoned it after only two weeks, I just don’t have the time to do both it and one of these countdown posts on the same day. Rest assured it’ll be returning next week when we’re be back to having very little else to write about.

#29
The Young Republic
‘Modern Plays’

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One of my favourite discoveries of the past year or so was The Young Republic. In fact, they were one of the bands I wanted to babble about that indirectly prompted me into starting this thing, and they become the first band I ever wrote about. Now I don’t know if ‘Modern Plays’ is actually from 2006 as I’m thinking that the EP it’s from was released late in 2005, but it’s one of the songs that I’ve played the most in the last year, so it makes the list. While it was easy in the early days to assign The Young Republic a label of being like Belle & Sebastian, they have grown far more abstract with each release. This song even manages to have a mini jam session in the middle of it, which still all comes together again for one final round of the chorus. About as perfect as indie folk pop can get.

#28
The Indelicates
‘New Art For The People’

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The Indelicates is largely the project of Simon and Julia Indelicate, which may not be of a great deal of interest. What might be though is that Julia used to be a part of The Pipettes before departing the band sometime last year. This is what led me to The Indelicates, and the most fun part of it all is that they are the far better band. It’s hard to pigeonhole them as each song seems to sound so different to the last, but what we’ve got here are a lot of witty, down to earth lyrics sung by a gruff male voice and a sweet female one. ‘New Art For The People’ is the best example of this, a charming tale about two people who really don’t like each other but stay together in a band because they are successful. With it’s back and forth deliveries and rising final section, it all comes across a little bit like a modern version of ‘Fairytale of New York’.

#27
Sky Larkin
‘Traits and Traitors’

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Sky Larkin are one of the British “success stories” of 2006, and that will hopefully continue through 2007. Through a bunch of great songs on their Myspace page to gigging the hell out of their native Leeds and London, the band have built up quite a formiddable following. ‘Traits and Traitors’ is one of their darker songs, all moody arrangements and refined vocals. Big things loom for 2007, including a release of their debut single, ‘One of Two’ in January and a small tour with fellow AFoR favourite Los Campesinos! in March.

#26
Voxtrot
‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’

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What can I say about Voxtrot that hasn’t already been said? They have pretty much dominated indie blogs over the past year and now seem to be crossing over into the mainstream. I still think that the ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP is better than the ‘Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives’ one, but this song still stands out entirely. Trying to find a band that could craft songs in a finer manner than Voxtrot would be an almost impossible task. The words, the textures, the depth. All perfect.

#25
I’m From Barcelona
‘We’re From Barcelona’

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Coming off like a rather less creepy version of The Polyphonic Spree, the 29 members of Sweden’s I’m From Barcelona (go figure) simply bring pop songs that are full of joy. Incredibly simplistic pop songs at that take. Take introduction song ‘We’re From Barcelona’ for example: it only actually has eight lines that it just repeats a couple of times. But who really cares when it all sounds as gleeful as this? If you’re not singing along to “love is a feeling that we don’t understand / but we’re gonna give it to you” within a couple of plays, you’re dead inside.

#24
Cansei De Ser Sexy
‘Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above’

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The second song from CSS to make our list, and by far their strongest. It runs the risk of being overrun by the style over substance thing and it’s almost too post-modern for it’s own good, but it sounds too good to dislike. It’s all sultry vocals and overblown synth with a nod and a wink, but that’s what makes CSS so much fun in the first place. It even manages to have a little Death From Above 1979 style breakdown in the middle of it, just to make music geeks like me happy. One of the best videos of the year too.

#23
Human Television
‘I Laughed’

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I’ve loved Human Television since their ‘All Songs Written By’ EP nearly four years ago, and thought for some time that they were destined to do nothing more than those seven lovely songs. Then out of nowhere a new album appeared, led by ‘I Laughed’, which proved that hadn’t skipped a beat in the gap in between and had maybe picked up a couple of new ones. Nothing is all that different from the EP with it’s gentle guitar and smooth harmonies, but the songwriting has certainly improved, and an addition of a female vocalist to the mix does them no harm at all.

#22
The Besties
‘Prison Song’

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I’ve been meaning to write about The Besties for the longest time, but never seemed to get around to actually typing anything. This means they are probably only one of only a handful of bands that have made this list without anything more substantial on the site. For those unfamiliar, The Besties are a three-piece twee pop band from Brooklyn. All of their songs tell adorable little stories, and ‘Prison Song’ is at the forefront of these. Harmonies, melodies and nice little lyrics rule the day here.

#21
Los Campesinos!
‘Death To Los Campesinos!’

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I’ve already prattled on about Cardiff’s Los Campesinos! over and over, so there isn’t very much more that I can add here. They are easily in my list of the top five bands of the year, and all of that is based on a four song EP entitled ‘Hold On Now Youngster’. Four songs of perfect pop bliss full of all of the elements I love, their next twelve months should be fascinating to watch. Only forming early in 2006, they were propelled into the limelight and were garnering label interest before they had even played ten gigs. They signed to Wichita (home of Bloc Party) at the end of the year, and a double a-side debut single (‘We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives’ / ‘Don’t Make Me Do The Math(s)’) is to follow in the new year.

#20
Shake My Hand
‘Invincible’

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Another band to come out of the seemingly unstoppable Cardiff music scene is Shake My Hand. I actually wrote about these guys earlier on in the year, but they were called Yossarian back then. I’m not entirely sure on the reason for the name change, but it doesn’t matter as they still sound just as good. Wonderfully simple songs about mundane things (“Fancy a cup of tea? / Fuck, we’ve got no milk / Ben, d’you fancy going down the shop?”) all delivered in the kind of bored vocal style that makes The Rakes so enjoyable.