Good Weather For Airstrikes

Their band name may be less than ideal (deal with it, you’ll get over it the second the music starts), but holy shit these kids have talent. The Moths unfuckwithable debut 7″ features a triple threat of near-flawless British guitar-pop gems infused with synths and a drum machine to give it an electro-punk flavor. It’s rare enough that you find a debut single with a B-side good enough to rival it’s spotlighted counterpart, but to come across a debut with two B-sides every bit as good as the A-side is fucking unheard of. But that’s exactly the case here, with “Wild Birds” and “Valentine” proving to be every bit as good as – if not better than - “Games”, no easy task considering the extremely high quality of the track in its own right.

The tricky thing is, there’s nothing of overwhelming academic merit about these tracks and the whole affair isn’t all that groundbreaking per se, but at the same time you’d be hard-pressed to find a single band that you could convincingly argue the Moths were ripping off here. Sure, the huge synthy parts in “Games” have a very Killers feel about them and frontman James Fox’s diction recalls that of Interpol’s Paul Banks at times, and yeah, that bouncy synth riff in “Wild Birds” is straight out of Gnarls Barkley’s “Gone Daddy Gone”, but none of these instances give off the impression that the band consciously took notes from any of those bands at any point. Furthermore, you can’t really point to one specific thing the band does truly spectacularly. The lyrics are thoroughly enjoyable most of the time (“a joy and a pleasure to listen to” as Rya might assert), but choruses like “All just a game in my head!” (“Games”) and “I’m never gonna let you go!” (“Wild Birds”) aren’t exactly breaking new ground or anything. The guitarmanship here is pretty routine, ditto for the drums (which are actually programmed on a drum machine), but shit – when everything comes together, the final package just cannot be denied.

The synth work takes the tracks to a whole new level while remaining subtle enough not to steal the show completely, and nowhere is this more evident than on “Games”, the single’s actual A-Side despite some significant thunder-stealing on behalf of “Wild Birds” and “Valentine”. The chorus, while admittedly generic, hits as hard as anything you’ll hear this year and the track is a joyride from start to finish, bursting at the seams with an unflinching vitality. “Wild Birds” is more of the same with a bouncier synth riff thrown into the mix and features Fox’s incredibly endearing lyrics and vocal structures taking center stage. It was initially my least favorite of the bunch, but if you can keep yourself from singing “Gone daddy gonnnnnne” over the verses long enough to give it a chance you just might find yourself listening to it on repeat for an hour in the car. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything. But the real showstopper here is “Valentine”, the track that first got me hooked and a shining example of how unbridled optimism, youthful exuberance and clever lyricism can converge to create one of the best tracks of the year.

In fact, the band’s knack for simplistic yet incredibly addictive and endlessly enjoyable guitar-pop, with its youthful vitality and endearing lyricism, recalls the Wombats more than anything else I’ve heard in the last year, even if the two possess marked stylistic differences. So it’s fitting then, that as the Wombats’, the best unsigned band in Britain until they’re recent signing with 14th Floor Recordings, star rises from the obscurity of the realm of the unsigned, the torched is passed on to the only other band in the UK at the moment with the chops to beat them at their own game. Only time will tell, but with three tracks good enough to shine as singles in any other band’s repertoire on the Moths’ first-ever release, it’s safe to say it doesn’t get much more promising than this.

STREAM: “Games” - The Moths ((highly recommended))

STREAM: “Wild Birds” - The Moths ((highly recommended))

MP3: “Valentine” - The Moths ((highly recommended))

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.