Hype can often ruin a band. Much like too much of a good thing; pile on heaps of praise and expectation upon the head of a new act, and the wheels can come off before they’ve even got into second gear. London trio We Have Band are one such collective. Winning Glastonbury Festival’s 2009 Emerging Talent Contest and creating a buzz the size of a giant 10 foot angry mutated bumblebee, the bar of anticipation has been raised for debut album WHB.
So teaming up with celebrated producer Gareth Jones isn’t a bad start. The producer, who’s worked with the likes of Grizzly Bear, Depeche Mode and These new Puritans, has helped to make WHB a diverse, eclectic grouping of influence and taste. It’s beat heavy, dancing down the road of disco, but like a musical pub crawl, the tracks stop at different intervals taking the sound in a new direction. One of the band’s first singles OH!, is easily mistaken for The Rapture, whilst You Came Out is CSS handcuffed to Peter, Bjorn & John.
It’d be extremely difficult to pidgeon-hole We Have Band in the usual sense. They cross genres; hugging indie, disco and new wave in a groovy, yet sweaty and twisted embrace. New single Divisive is pumped full of 80s synth, drawing in a Friendly Fires sound, whereas Piano strives for something bigger, brilliantly opening the album with Doves like confidence in vocals. How To Make Friends pounds on with LCD Soundsystem like approach, as Foals and Hot Chip vocals clamber over each other softly rising to team together in harmony. Similarly, Honeytrap, a track released for free when the album was announced, also clambers into Hot Chip’s colourful Nike High Tops kicking in a repetitive and extremely memorable chorus, biting at the bit with indie disco potential.
Dede, Darren and Thomas all lend their voices to the album, but each keeps enough individuality to do nothing but add to each track. Love What You’re Doing? does this, powerfully striding on a Talking Heads path that flicks between the light of electro and the darkness of it’s Joy Division-ional deep, bassy beats. Hero Knows stands tall in this respect too; building and adding in the tinkling of percussion to dirty chords and synthesisers, warmly coated in the layered vocals as the dreamy chorus floats above this perfect wall of sound.
We Have Band made this record on their own, shrugging the record label offers in favour of doing things their own way. But what is most impressive is that it has none of WHB sounds homemade. It’s cool, calm and collected, firing a fantastic debut that both delights and delivers a chunk of brilliance, aimed straight at the indie industry’s heart and mind. We Have Band...You Have A Fan.
Stereoboard Rating - 4.5/5
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