Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm
You may or may not be aware that in college football in the US, they have this thing called the Heisman Trophy which is awarded to the best player in the nation each year. It’s a fairly pointless process as it generally gets awarded to someone who never amounts to much as a professional player. But to draw attention to a player that a team thinks merits the award they send out various attention drawing items to the voters. For example, a few years ago there was young quarterback named Ryan Leaf playing for Washington or Washington State, I forget which now, but it’s not important. Anyway, his team sent actual leaves in the mail to the voters. I don’t know if he won the award, I just know that he went onto a miserable career as one of professional footballs all time biggest failures with San Diego.
Why do I relate this seemingly useless information to you? I do so because Little Plato have mailed me their 3 track CD demo in outlandish packaging, as if to draw attention to it away from the bunch of other CD’s that we get sent in plastic sleeves with no lyrics or anything. The CD came packaged in extraordinarily cute corrugated cardboard, tied together with a string. Inside the lush packaging are 3 laser printed photo’s, a booklet, and uh, a backstage pass to their website?! Not quite sure what is up with that. The booklet told me things like that had played an HMV Showcase and appeared on a Manchester University radio show. These and the promotional nonsense in the package had me convinced that this CD was going to be utter bollocks. It turned out that it actually wasn’t all that bad, despite some chuff production where the guitars get mega distorted even what not so loud on the first song. Opening track “Sugarspoon” rather scarily reminded me of Christie Front Drive in places (and I do not throw that comparison around too easily), with drifting vocals and nice guitars. Although really I expect that they probably just want to be the next Coldplay or some other band like that. “Pretty Girl” is a competent David Gray style indie strum which seems to have a vague Americana influence going on. We end on “Spirals” that features jangly guitars and bass progression that sounds like a tamer Sunny Day Real Estate.
This band didn’t blow me away, but they were much better than I was expecting. On the other hand, my chest is full of gunge today and I feel like crap, so I don’t really have any idea what I am writing. So yeah, pretty solid melodic indie rock that you’ll probably hear on Radio 1 in the evening some day.