Bubbling under the cultural radar of scene-ridden acceptance is a new bred of rock and roll bands. Shunning the short-lived fads of style-over-substance electro know-nothings and the copious other disintegrating sub-genres that have been and gone are a collection of guitar-based bands who are taking the underground by storm. And it’s just what we’ve been looking for.
It’s less of a back to basics affair and more of a progressive step into new-age British guitar music. The likes of Sound Of Guns, 12 Dirty Bullets, The Rubicon and Exit Calm are all wearing the regal branding of their past nineties guitar based heroes on their sleeve but they’ve bought it into a new age of thrilling supremacy, muscled-up guitars and hollering vocals that call to mind everyone from The Verve to The Music.
This is a revival that’s well overdue. These likely lads are banishing the post-oasis lad-ethos by creating something that’s got an irrefutable dance-music groove while retaining a flair of distinctly gritty Brit-rockness. It’s unashamedly idiosyncratic and thought through rock, with songs like ‘Architects’ by Liverpool’s Sound Of Guns blistering an audience with full-throttle riffs while ‘F at Man’ by 12 Dirty Bullets infuses that cockney wit of indie swagger with some brainy analogies that cast themselves deep into the sewer of social commentary.
Where the whole new-rave / electro thing kicked off with the Klaxons et al some 3 or 4 years ago, the guitar has taken a bit of a backseat, in a rather dubious and dumbfounded manor. And although Mumford and Marling have bought the whole folk revitalization into the mainstream, we’re lacking a certain bite. I’m not expecting genre-crafting pioneers or anything like that, but what we have here is a revitalised source of new visionaries who will hopefully put the guitar, the attitude and the over-powering strut back on the towering plinth of brilliance.
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