Atlantic
Hard-Fi: warts-and-all pop.
Details
HARD-FI With Mountain Con. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 206-324-8000, www.chopsuey.com. $15. All ages. 8 p.m. Mon., April 24.
THE EDITORS With stellastarr* and Monsters Are Waiting. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 206-324-8000, www.chopsuey.com. $15. All ages. 8 p.m. Thurs., April 27.
LADYTRON With the Presets. Neumo's, 925 E. Pike St., 206-709-9467, www.neumos.com. $18. 8 p.m. Wed., April 26.
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Now more than ever, Britain's hype machine works overtime, cogs spinning on a predictable wheel of buildup and breakdown. Propelled by a Pitchfork–meets–Us Weekly editorial fickleness, bands are born and busted in the public consciousness before they even have record deals—which brings us to three survivors of this process. What makes them unique is their scrappy passion. Liverpool's Ladytron have thrived as a highly stylized act that might've gone out with the electroclash trash were they not so multifaceted. Hard-Fi and the Editors are from the burbs and industrial Birmingham, respectively. Playing Seattle next week, they're all up against some of the most discriminating audiences this side of NME. Here's why we think you should—attention span permitting—work their diverse sounds into your showgoing schedule.
Hard-Fi
Hard-Fi frontman Richard Archer is propelled by the same documentary spirit that drives his countrymen Dizzee Rascal and Mike Skinner of the Streets. He wants to chart the daily experience of the young English everyman in warts-and-all pop that doesn't scrimp on detail. On Stars of CCTV (Atlantic), Hard-Fi's debut, he sings about coming up short at the ATM, getting into "unnecessary trouble," and receiving interesting results from his girlfriend's pregnancy test. Unlike Dizzee and Skinner, Archer plays in a proper rock group, one with a guitarist and a bassist and everything. The music on CCTV—titled after the closed-circuit surveillance cameras peppered throughout London's public spaces—isn't as straightforward as stuff by the Strokes or the White Stripes, but it certainly beats with a live-band pulse.
"The original idea was mine," Archer says of the outfit's beginning in 2002, when he formed the group in suburban London Staines with guitarist Ross Phillips, bassist Kai Stephens, and drummer Steve Kemp. "Hard-Fi is a band, though, and it's always been a democracy. If you're in a band, you have to live and die for it. We're all equals."
CCTV seems to back him up on this. Archer's vision dominates the material, but his bandmates give the music its vital push. Stephens might be the album's MVP: He anchors "Cash Machine" with an irresistibly funky bass line just waiting to be sampled by some MC (maybe Dizzee). Phillips layers fuzzy stun-gun guitar throughout "Middle Eastern Holiday," threatening to derail the track into a pure-noise gutter. Kemp never seems satisfied with just one beat per song, repeatedly leading the band into dub-reggae breakdowns right in the middle of hard-charging post-punk tunes.
Like music by Gorillaz or "Song 2"–era Blur, Hard-Fi's rock is constantly nodding to other, more elastic forms: "Hard to Beat" erupts into a sweet disco chorus; "Move on Now" is a tender piano ballad; the title track wants to be a spaghetti Western overture. "Music in the U.K. crosses over quite nicely," Archer says by way of explanation. "People won't just listen to guitar bands or just listen to urban acts. If it's good, it's accepted by everybody."
And Hard-Fi are being accepted. A bona fide hit at home, where the band was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize last year alongside Coldplay and M.I.A., Stars of CCTV has been making headway in the U.S. of late as well— always a milestone for English bands intimidated by how enormous our country appears to someone mapping a tour route. Archer acknowledges that American interest in Dizzee and the Streets, as well as in young English rock acts like Kaiser Chiefs and Arctic Monkeys (both of whom share in the singer's quest to spotlight the mundane), might have eased Hard-Fi's way here. "They have a very British sound," he admits, "so that could have opened things up for us a little." MIKAEL WOOD
The Editors
"Men and mascara . . . they both run at the sight of emotion," reads the female-targeted copy on a Lambrini ad. Tell that to the Editors—whose platinum-selling indie debut, The Back Room (Kitchenware), has brought them success via bleeding hearts, though they're still drinking swill.
"The money hasn't come through yet. Maybe it will never, I don't know," laments guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, who creates the tremulous, shimmering canvas for singer-guitarist Tom Smith, bassist Russell Leetch, and drummer Ed Lay's somber hues. On tour with New York's We Are Scientists recently, "we introduced them to British lifestyles, to the shittiest alcoholic drink you can possibly get," Urbanowicz says of Lambrini. "You can buy a liter and a half for about 2 pounds. It's hideous—it takes like crusty lemonade and wine and gives you a high that's almost drugesque." Sparks, anyone?
Once based in Birmingham, the quartet now live "out of a bag," a situation that's given them the tag of "Europe's hardest-working band" in some of their overseas press. Touring aside, detractors will say that it's not hard to modernize strategic pieces of Echo and the Bunnymen's back catalog, but the Editors aren't sore that critics stall out at easy comparisons. "We understand why it happens, and we're not offended by it," says Urbanowicz. "Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen are amazing bands, so it could be a lot worse."
