LEISURE

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Following the previous post about the Brooklyn band Friends, we’re following it up with a band that are just as ignorant of SEO, but equally as tidy when it comes to writing some very special pop music. So far they only seem to have been noticed by a handful of US bloggers, but now that they’re in the process of completing their début album, Plastic Soul, the first few UK blogs are now being introduced to them to begin an initial campaign for what looks to be a very exciting prospect for either side of the Atlantic.

Leisure are a trio from Boston who deliver the kind of confident, alluring lounge pop music that used to be crooned out by Pulp, or even Space. The stylish frontman, Jed Rouhana, is a particularly fascinating prospect, with some rare star qualities. He looks great, with striking features, perhaps from his Palestinian roots, and has a swaggering confidence beyond their short experience. We cannot wait to watch them live, as the clips floating around Youtube are all enjoyable. He also hosts a very smooth voice, a natural skill when carried with this level of confidence, which is all the more remarkable considering he only selected to sing quite late in their formation.

The lead single off the debut album will be Early Morning Skies. It starts with a kind of stabbed synth riff akin to the likes of Class Actress, but after 50 seconds the full band reveals itself as the sound is blown wide open. It’s as exciting as the cinema curtains broadening when the film arrives after a lengthy spell of adverts, injecting a little pace to your pulse. The voice gets a lift in pitch, as Rouhana sings “what you want to have, what you cannot have, is Me“. Once the song hits full flow it’s a beautiful plateau with a view that’s penetrated by Christopher Link’s icy guitar shards and Sam Hamad’s grooved beats and basslines. Every layer is so perfectly designed it’s difficult resisting an instant replay.

Outside These Walls sounds a little post-punk, in the same way U2 did when they started out, although it’s in need of just as much polish as those early U2 outings. It’s Alright (On The Suez Canal) introduces strings, which warms up their sound to a woolly Badly Drawn Boy level, as Rouhana becomes the storytelling crooner. It’s utterly irresistible. Follow Me continues the shimmering panache, beginning slower, but once again we find Rouhana leading you along as he speaks directly to us. It’s a very clean and tidy three and half minutes, like all good pop songs, and the anticipation builds up  - a trick they’ve really mastered – making you constantly feel like they’re about to deliver the song’s break. When it finally arrives we once again get the radiant groove that seems to be their signature move.

They’ve previously toured with San Francisco’s Girls back in April and the trio has two dates lined up in New York at the end of August, one at Littlefield and the other at Pianos. They’ve bottled the kind of romanticism of Wave Machines and the foppish charm of Jarvis Cocker at his comfortably lanky best and tipped it all into a timeless form of Tupperware pop. Just watch this performance of a live show from last September and – just like our beloved Jarvis – we find it impossible to take our eyes off the excellent, charismatic Rouhana. The UK will absolutely adore this band, and particularly him. This feels like the birth of a proper star. Their manager just informed us that the début album will be out this August, and so in due course we hope to find out if this nebulous becomes something truly stellar, but the fusion is spot on with this evidence. (MB)

LEISURE – EARLY MORNING SKIES

LEISURE – IT’S ALRIGHT (ON THE SUEZ CANAL)

LEISURE – FOLLOW ME

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FRIENDS

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We’re never going to get through this critique without discussing their band name, so we may as well address it straight from the outset. Friends is pretty rubbish isn’t it. Apart from the piss-poor Chandler, Phoebe, Joey et al connotations, it’s like the opposite of Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Pessimization is perhaps more appropriate. Thankfully the music has enough gravitational pull to ensure people find them eventually. In fact, that’s exactly what ‘buzz’ is isn’t it? Anyway, lead protagonist and vocalist, Samantha Urbani, flips the issue on it’s head, stating “I am hoping we will dominate the search engine”. Well, we think they’ll start by dominating your iPods.

Friends are a quintet from Brooklyn that Samantha has forged together from those people around her. They seem a refreshingly natural collective, getting together in the way indie-kid hipsters look like they should do – dressing the part, having the attitude, acting like an impenetrable clique, hanging out at all the counter-culture places – except hipsters never make it out, instead selecting to stand around judging each other. Friends on the other hand seem to be an unorthodox community with genuine intentions and real abilities, perhaps born from Samantha’s free-spirited family upbringing. She ticks all the ALT boxes, even spending time studying in Berlin and working in the East Village’s vegan kitchens, yet what she’s created is a group that’s warm and welcoming.

They were first found on the scene at New York’s CMJ last year, where they played one of their first ever shows – not including their launch gig at Samantha’s birthday party some weeks earlier. This was quickly followed by a tour supporting Darwin Deez, with whom they now share the Lucky Number Music label. It’s being whispered that their first UK shows will be due this Autumn, as they arrive to support another pack of NYC label mates, Caged Animals. This will hopefully follow the release of their single, I’m His Girl, in September, although we may have to wait until 2012 before the full album is finally out.

The first track that had a handful of bloggers flirting outrageously with them was the single, Friend Crush, which came out on March 21st this year. It’s a wonderful introduction to their mixture of sounds. Dreamy 60s pop beats begin a tune that quickly merges into a blend of Best Coast and Santigold. Samantha’s vocals lead the melody as Lesley Hann’s bass throbs behind. The B-side, Feeling Dank, is just as low-fi and equally as mesmeric, as we find them pushing the Best Coast comparisons further, but it’s all backed by an enjoyable jangle of instruments and beats that sound like more of a jam on kitchen paraphernalia. It’s like they’ve decided to simply hit what’s next to them to see what works. And it works!

Ultimately this is music that has plenty of the addictive factor, pushing all the right buttons between simple pop and leftfield experimentalism. Their look, their sound and their history give the scenesters a well-needed facelift in a world where the word is hipster is now derogatory. Whether it will make you reconsider your disapproving looks at the usual bunch of unemployed wasters in your local alt-cafe is yet to be proven, but there’s clearly some hope here. The issues with the SEO may prove harder to overcome, but something tells us that these guys weren’t designed with the Internet in mind, more for the counter culture. It’s this story of an alternative kinship that gives them the kind of authenticity that other bands will never attain. If you have to try hard, then you’re just a ‘try hard’. With Friends the task of gathering together a band and making some excellent music was in fact the most natural thing in the world.  (MB)

FRIENDS – FRIEND CRUSH

FRIENDS – FEELIN DARK

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