I love it when I get a piece of music under the pen, and it is an excuse to break out all my favourite adjectives and probably already much overused turns of phrase. With The Danphes latest single, “Heartbreak High” basking in a shimmering C86 sun (and if you don’t know, ask your parents…or perhaps even your parents’ parents…god, I feel old,) I feel that I am about to use up my quota. Oh well, I’m going in.
Guitars shimmer and shine; beats and bass lines are buoyant, with enough brevity that the light gets in; the riffs are chiming and charming; the vocals are infectious; and all those incidental moves and motifs, groves and grace notes, counterpoint melodies, and additional touches are nothing short of superb. And that sign off riff…the icing on the sonic cake.
To call this lush indie guitar music gets you partway there, but younger readers might not understand that in the creative years following the post-punk boom, this is what we meant by pop music. Before digital dross made by committee – marketing research and hordes of producers – came along, jangling low-slung, six-string indie kid guitar wielders ruled the roost. Music like this, via bands like House of Love, Teenage Fanclub, and across the pond REM, made up a not insignificant part of the charts. Imagine that? (If you hear the term “80’s music” and immediately think of Rick Astley or Olivia Neutron Bomb, you weren’t there, man, you wouldn’t understand.)
But that was then, and this is now, and now, thanks to The Danphes, a name that my spell checker isn’t happy about, sounds fan-flippin-tastic.
