Envy & Other Sins - 'Highness'

 

So, they won Channel 4’s mobileact Unsigned competition, and they are apparently named after a 14 year-old’s MSN moniker.  They’ve got to be awful, right?  Like The Subways given an emo makeover?  I bet that’s what they’re like.

But wait…what sayeth their MurdochSpace?  “Sounds like: The Kinks, Roxy Music, Super Furry Animals”.  Well, blow me down!  My weary cynicism, cultivated by almost a decade’s worth of wretched, grey-stained MTV2 fodder, begins to flush away in a colonic irrigation of hope.  ‘Highness’ gets underway with some spikey, faintly garage-rock riffing and yet, all of a sudden, I am looking for positives.  There are plenty.

Envy & Other sins may lack the otherworldly genius and/or black belt-level wordplay of their stated influences, but what they do retain is a sharp ear for 'Proper Pop'.  The verses bounce along like the brooding teenage son of SFA’s ‘Something For The Weekend’, with a reedy organ topping making it all sound a little bit like The Coral did before they were lobotomised.  It’s even got a snappy internal rhyming scheme and everything.

Most importantly, though, the chorus - “Highness, how can you blame me? / When you play me up against your other lovers” – is a big one.  But not in a The Feeling kind of way.  Well, maybe a little bit…but also in a Supergrass-soundtracking-a-B-movie-horror kind of way.  Just not as good as that would be.

All in all, it is very encouraging that a band who prioritise actual tunes over their own image (lead singer Ali M. Forbes looks rather like Dennis Pennis, brainchild of Paul Kaye) could win something as presumably gormless as a C4 talent contest.  ‘Highness’ is a well-crafted indie pop nugget that means well but is unlikely to change anyone’s life.  And, in that respect, it’s not really enough.

'Highness' is released on 3rd March (Polydor) 

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