As I mentioned in my last post, BBC 6 Music have been making an awful lot of noise about their Sound of 2009 list. White Lies are second on that list (after Little Boots, whom I’ve already profiled on these hallowed pages…). Now anyone who’s been near a radio in the last few weeks will have heard their single To Lose My Life, and if you have any sense at all you’ll already hate it. Added to this, the singer seemed to be having a little trouble hitting the notes in the chorus when they preformed it in The Hub.
Not an auspicous start, I’m sure you’ll agree; and certainly enough to ensure I dismissed them without much of a thought.
In my more reflective (read: pretentious) moments I like to kick back with some french philosophic literature, a cup of strong home-ground coffee (single origin, no less; none of that “blend” nonsense) and some Esbjörn Svensson Trio on the stereo. The now sadly departed Esbjörn Svensson and his eponymous trio are/were possibly the “coolest” jazz band around. In this case I mean cool in two ways. Firstly, image-wise: they were stick thin, foreign and almost always photographed in black and white. Secondly, and more importantly, music-wise: drums, bass and piano is just about as good as jazz gets in my opinion, and on top of that they had a taste for the experimental and were great believers in the joys of fuzz boxes.
Now imagine my horror when midway through a relaxing evening I’m assaulted by a track that sounds like it’s come straight from the Terminator soundtrack. It turns out that White Lies have a track called E. S. T. A traumatising experience, I’m sure you’ll agree. Once I recovered from the shock, however, it turned out that the White Lies track wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting, inspiring me to give them a second chance.
Ultimately they’re actually not too bad a band, and I might have quite liked them a few years ago. But to be frank; do we really need another Joy Division cover band? I think not.
It’s always a shame to dismiss a band’s entire repertoire with such a sweeping generalisation, but alas, with this type of band it’s pretty much inevitable. I was only ever a casual Joy Division listener (I like the hits and watched the films, but couldn’t ever fully appreciate a whole album of the stuff) and the truth is that I enjoy the the copycats (Interpol, The Bravery, Placebo, The Editors, et al) far more than the source material. There are hundreds of them, though, and I subconsciously group them all together – guilty by association, if you will. It’s a pity, as White Lies have actually got a few good songs; it would be great to hear this band if they’d at least attempted to find a genre of their own and hadn’t ended up being so derivative.
White Lies are on Fiction Records, which is a Polydor imprint if I’m not mistaken, and I’m not sure what their views are regarding bloggers giving their tunes away, so you’ll have to be content with streamed audio for this post. In recompense, I’ve included several tracks for your listening pleasure:
The godawful single To Lose My Life, in case you’ve been living in a hole lately and haven’t heard it yet:
Their song E. S. T.
And their source material, á la Terminator 2: Judgment Day…
And finally some decent music to undo the damage of the last 3 tracks: Esbjörn Svensson Trio’s Goldwrap.
Eaten by Monsters 
9 January 2009
Little Boots: 6 Music’s “Sound of 2009”
Posted by Tom under comment, music | Tags: BBC 6 Music, Little Boots, Ready for the Floor, Sound of 2009 |[2] Comments
But to the matter in hand: BBC 6 Music have finally, after an awful lot of fuss and bluster, announced the winner of their prestigious accolade, The Sound of 2009. It’s Little Boots, who I’ve only come across via Later… but who seems to be causing a bit of a stir, mostly as a result of her nifty little toy the Yamaha Tenori-On.
If I’m honest, I’m not too sure there’s much to here beyond the live gimmicks, as all the recorded stuff I’ve heard seems to be pretty generic and is easily dismissible. I’d definitely recommend checking out her live stuff. As a result of winning the Sound of 2009 she did a BBC session at The Hub, but her best work (so far) is to be found on her youtube account, particularly here and here. The Tenori-On makes for quite a visual show, and the stripped-down versions of her songs are far superior to the band renditions.
I doubt anyone can ever accurately predict the “next big thing”, and just because we’re at the dawning of a fresh new year doesn’t change that. No matter what emerges, I’m certainly looking forward to it. 2008 was in my opinion one of the best years ever for new music (though this seems to be going against the opinions of almost every other music blog I’ve read lately), and I’m hoping 2009 will be even better.
Little Boots’ Stuck on Repeat is the iTunes single of the week at the moment, so check that out (and beware the sneaky remixes of it that many blogs are passing off as the real thing). In the meantime, here’s her cover of Hot Chip’s Ready for the Floor, made using nowt but her voice and the snazzy Tenori-On:
Little Boots – Ready for the Floor
Happy new year.