Some music defies description. Imagine listening to ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ when it was released in June 1967! Imagine being in Vienna’s Kärntnertortheater on 7 May 1824 for the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by the Maestro himself! Imagine a 1943 night flight over a glowing Dresden in a fully laden Lancaster with Dame Vera Lynn’s new tune on your headphones! Sometimes, the appropriate words have yet to be invented.
The music of The Phenomenal Handclap Band, however, does not defy description. My old granny used to tell me that if I had nothing nice to say I should say nothing. If I wanted to say something nice about The Phenomenal Handclap Band I would describe them as another well-intentioned, metro sexual garage band who want to be The XX. But, if I wanted to be honest about what I thought about The Phenomenal Handclap Band, and their new single ‘Baby’, I would not say nice things.
It’s music like The Phenomenal Handclap Band’s that make me wish I was a town planner so I could outlaw semi-detached houses and force everybody to live in tower blocks, where nobody had a garage so nobody could have a garage band. It’s music like The Phenomenal Handclap Band that enables ‘The X-Factor’ and ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ pollute the same prime time television slots that once belonged to Morecambe and Wise, ‘Bullseye’ and ‘The Price Is Right’.
I’ve listened to The Phenomenal Handclap Band drunk, I’ve listened to The Phenomenal Handclap Band sober, and it makes no absolutely no difference. If The Phenomenal Handclap Band sound the same live, as they do in this single, perhaps they should consider renaming themselves The Phenomenal Slow Handclap Band?
Release Date 15/03/2010 (Tummy Touch)
