You're A Shining Star, You'll Do Great in LA

For reasons lost in the dull daily grind of a north-west business park, I tend to buy my albums in groups of four. And because there hasn’t been much music on here recently, I thought this week would be music week – so I’m keeping all my rants about Eastenders to myself for now. So anyway, yesterday was DM, today is Nightmare Of You.

Avid blog readers may have got the inside scoop on NOY a long, long time ago. The band have been mentioned on Ultragrrl’s blog for months now and indeed their first tentative release came through there. The only song I’d heard prior to the album popping through my letterbox was “My Name Is Trouble,” a song so perfectly constructed in a mid-naughties post-Killers 80s influenced electro-indie-pop way that I initially thought it could only have been created by evil Scandinavian scientists in a secret pop laboratory.

But no! The album is full of similar delights, albeit more traditionally rockist and guitar based than the mighty “…..Trouble.” What’s the best comparison I can come up with? I suppose there are similarities to The Killers but there are far less synths than with Brandon’s mob. It’s quite squarely aimed at a pop trajectory – many of the choruses are so catchy that you’re singing along by the final run through the first time you hear the song. And I love guitar parts that you can whistle. This is not difficult music by any stretch of the imagination – it’s for making you smile, making you dance and making you sing along. But then, just as comedy is the most difficult film genre to get right, then surely credible pop must be challenging for that position as far as music goes? And more to the point, I like pop music. So there.

But before I make this sound like the first McFly album, the lyrical subjects are often decidedly adult. In fact, the more times I’ve listened to it, the more the interesting lyrics have come out. Let’s just say - lots about death.

Anyway, first single “I Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard” (I told you) is a singalonga classic – video here. Other songs, including the monolithic “My Name Is Trouble” here. Website here.