Not looking to get into a Paris fashion show ... Little Man Tate
In December, that three-legged, one-eyed Britpop mongrel, Shed Seven, a band universally derided even before they started pimping out their tunes to advertise The Link, are touring to sold out venues nationwide. Stranger still, in the same month, Sheffield's Little Man Tate - recently described by Jarvis Cocker as a "pile of shit" - are playing Blackpool's Empress Ballroom, a 4,000-capacity indication of their burgeoning popularity.
This brings up several talking points: nostalgia; the Web 2.0 ability of bands to bypass the normal arbiters of cool (NME, Zane Low); our craving for live shows in the MP3 age; whether or not you can book the Empress Ballroom dirt cheap in winter, but, really, the popularity of Shed Seven and LMT is more about tradition than change. It is evidence of a phenomenon that historically has been deliberately ignored by a self-interested media; that of the dogged lads' bands who, despite being a laughing stock among indie's taste makers, find a large, loyal audience... particularly up north.
By "lads' bands", I don't mean Oasis or Kasabian. They transcend their natural Fred Perry-wearing demographic and appeal equally to hipsters and students. They're cool. The bands I'm talking about: Inspiral Carpets, the Farm, Northern Uproar, Shed Seven, the Pigeon Detectives, the Twang, Little Man Tate - the music press's "northern monkeys" - will never be cool. Indeed, that's a key part of their appeal.
The lads (and their no-bullshit girlfriends) who like such bands are a meticulous bunch who can spot a faker from five miles. They can see that blinged-up hip-hop says nothing to them about their lives in, say, Bradford. They think pop music's for idiots. They're suspicious of synthesisers because a five year-old could play one. And they don't want to listen to angst-ridden pretentious student wankers, who attract other pretentious student wankers to their gigs. What they want to see up on stage is lads like them. Lads who go to the football. Lads who swear. Lads who like a drink. Lads who, like Little Man Tate, sing about everyday concerns in everyday language. Lads who wouldn't be seen dead at Fabric or a Paris fashion show. Lads who look like they know what do with a spirit level.
Being regarded as declassé by the London media goes with the territory. Shed Seven was regarded as musically laboured in much the same way as LMT are regarded as lyrically gauche. Equally, bands like the Pigeon Detectives (a kind of musical version of Viz comic) or the Farm (but are they really hooligans?) can induce nervous PC palpitations in middle-classes indie kids. But their unspun honesty, both in the music and as personalities, is like a blood pact with such bands' natural fanbase.
Which is not to say their following are boneheaded. Far from it. These lads - once a significant presence at Wedding Present and Smiths gigs (their idol Johnny Marr, not Morrissey) - are some of the soppiest sods going. In that regard, the Twang, who see no contradiction in writing songs about punching annoying neighbours and having your heart broken, are their perfect band. Because there's nothing a certain type of lad likes more than the beery catharsis of bellowing along to a tear-jerking meat'n'potatoes indie anthem, like the Inspirals' evergreen This Is How It Feels.
Emotionally underdeveloped? Yes. Kind of depressing when MIA exists? Maybe. But in a world where modern culture is so controlled, so predictable, so hidebound to mass marketing or notions of cool, any grassroots movement that refuses to buckle under and be told what to listen to has got be a good thing. Plus Shed Seven's debut single, Mark, is still a cracking record.
