Another Form of Relief

Took a test on Facebook the other day
Was supposed to show your mental age

When 51,3 opened with those two lines, I was just about ready to turn it off. While I do have a certain fondness for some Pelle Carlberg songs, I’ve never been a huge fan, and anything so self-consciously “down with the kids” enough to immediately cite Facebook was rather off-putting.

Sticking with it though, it’s just setting the scene for an amusing tale of something akin to a mid-life crisis. A sudden realisation of “I’m getting old” echoes through the song, and pondering whether reading broadsheets on the bus really gives you a mental age of 51. Hell, the fact he felt the need to write a song about it suggests it must have bothered him a fair bit.

On a side note, it was only after I heard this song that I looked up how Pelle Carlberg actually is. Turns out he is 39, which certainly took me by surprise. I had him pegged as being in his late twenties at most, but then I didn’t know he’d been recording since 1992 either. Ah, the joys of Wikipedia.

Still, I suppose songs like this are something we should get used to. I dread to think how many songs will be waxing nostalgic about iTunes, Myspace or Gmail ten years from now.

51,3 is taken from The Lilac Time, which was released back in August via Labrador Records. Pelle Carlberg will also be playing at the London Popfest this coming Thursday at the Brixton Windmill.

Great British Hopes celebrates new British music that is really bloody good.

As I was preparing to write this, I came across a fact that threw this piece into question. I tend to write these Great British Hopes pieces as a way of talking up the absolute best from all of the new bands I hear. Doing some research on Butcher Boy though, I discovered that they have been playing for 11 years. Which begs the question of whether they can really be hailed as a hope for the future of music. I decided to go with it though, as regardless of their longevity as a band, this is just too damn good.

Butcher Boy have floated around my mind for a while now. A Drowned In Sound review here, the odd promo email there. Even with that though, I never paid them much attention. I got the impression of another Scottish miserablist, and really, a man who already has a complete Arab Strap collection probably can’t take much more. Then the magic phrase appeared. “Compared to Belle and Sebastian” read the email, and I was in*.

Not that the end result is Belle & Sebastian exactly. Sure, you can hear those elements in the strings, but this is a band that is more down to the earth. Earnest lyrics sung out by someone who has listened to a lot of Smiths records but doesn’t quite know how to be Morrissey. No, if I were to place this on this indie pop landscape, I’d slot it alongside recent Swedish offerings like Jens Lekman or Pelle Carlberg. The sound is certainly British, but it likes to travel.

This kind of indie pop seems to be short supply in the UK at the moment. Butcher Boy may have formed 11 years ago, but with their second album release in three years, one gets a sense that they may have finally found their way.

React or Die will be released in April, but the lovely How Does It Feel To Be Loved? is selling advance copies through their shop right now.

* It occurs that I’ll probably now getting death metal bands mentioning the fact they sound like Belle & Sebastian in their promo emails.