The Svengalis - Sting In The Tail (Villains & Rogues)
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
If Dirty Pretty Things hadn't have been so stern on their debut album, they could have sounded half as good as The Svengalis do on their new tale of sun-kissed love woe 'Sting In The Tail'. Shorts and t-shirts at the ready as Cliff Richard's 'Summer Holiday' is perverted into 'Time For Heroes' and dangled above us as a catchy grit-floor tune that seems to good to be true yet salvos our ears in any case. A wicked-cool jumble sale of frolicsome fun is bewailed into what's fast becoming one of the most vital songs of any evening spent out on the tiles... and what's more is that it fits quite nicely at the start or end of the night, like a trashy power ballad that we all secretly enjoy.
The Svengalis are one of indie's best kept secrets (apologies for letting the cat outta the bag) and have gurgled beneath the surface for long enough to give them a feel for what makes us all happy. They've got songs that you can sing-a-long to with little forethought or qualms of uncoolness, and like numerous marching anthem makers before them they've got the white boys - who'd normally stand reservedly tapping a foot - throwing their bodies around like manic special bus riders it pits of abandoned expression. Such is their grasp of the idiosyncratic indie track that already they're summing up to be the next generations' Belle and Sebastian, a feat one would never have expected to be achieved.
This song has the beauty and smartened glory of a frenzied pop classic and sets the bright lights of dancehalls afire with blinding anarchy and hypnotically controlling vocals and Maccabees-like cheerful proficiency. It's a well-timed detonation of disorder that sputters into your head and pickles your mind with good-humoured and entirely pleasurable clasps of manifestation that hail to the thieves of whatever good fortunes were smiling down on the band when they wrote, what's certainly among, one of the best songs of the year so far.
Artists in this article: The Svengalis
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