This City

This City have been already been described in review as “like The Travelling Wilburys if it was made of members of Bloc Party and At The Drive In”. Maybe if you throw in the eyeball-popping nuances of Blood Brothers, the same turn-on-a-sixpence disco-jerk rhythms of the more danceable end of punk (think Les Savy Fav or !Forward Russia!), the impassioned cacophony of mid 80s Dischord Records-led emotional hardcore, the pop sensibility of tykes such as The Automatic and subtract the reference to Tom Petty and co, we might just be inclined to agree… This City formed and reside in Brighton in 2006 having met at a tattoo convention. Since stabilising their line-up (their two previous drummers departed to join The Pipettes and Architects) they’ve quickly established themselves as one of the surest bets in the UK’s thriving underground. Though they would surely cringe at the description, they’re one of those impossibly good-looking bands, five young men who look like they were born to share a stage with one another and who play with an almost telepathic ability. A blur of swinging fringes and speed-skinny legs, live This City are an engaging and explosive force. With their US counterparts having had a monopoly on the anthemic, life-affirming end of hardcore for some years now, This City are part of a renaissance of UK bands who can’t fully relate to Stateside accents and songs about shopping malls (cf Gallows, Ghost Of A Thousand, Kids In Glass Houses etc) and instead are making the music that best represents their lives. In their short career, they’ve already recorded a Radio 1 session for Huw Stephens, supported the likes of Biffy Clyro, Future Of The Left, Sparta, CapDown, Taking Back Sunday and As I Lay Dying and been lauded by everyone from Fierce Panda’s Simon Williams to Steve Lamacq to Rock Sound to The Guardian. With a tongue somewhere in the vicinity of their cheek, the latter wryly described This City as “a bunch of neo-post-quasi-sub-pseudo-new-wave kids who operate at the interface between nu rave and emo”, and noted that This City have “been on the road so much they've colonised most of the nation's seedy dives”. This City’s debut single ‘Romantic’ / ‘With Loaded Guns’ is released on Club Fandango / Fierce Panda on September 10 2007 and has already accrued much acclaim in the underground and a small legion of followers. Two slabs of uplifting dance floor punk built on incandescent guitars and choruses designed to punch holes in ceilings to, This City occupy that space between punk and pop, between despair and celebration, the gutter and the stars, youth and adulthood. Though This City’s future remains unwritten, we can see it shining brightly from here. Ben Myers, Kerrang! / September 2007 www.myspace.com/thiscitymusic