Cut Off Your Hands - Oh Girl

for a long time british pop music was ruled by 2 opposites: The Beatles and The Stones. your mom's favourites sons-in-law and the bad boys of rock'n'roll. good and bad, black and white. then the 80s offered blue: the gay gentleman, always perfectly dressed for a funeral but going to the carnival. sophisticated and lugubrious. The Smiths. from then on british pop music was ruled by the 3. just think Oasis and Blur and Pulp. it's obvious who is who.
with that in mind the first question for me about a new british band is: what school does it belong to? and very often the answer is rather simple. but must never be too simple. one thing that never should happen is to sound too much like one of the three bands. that privilege is reserved to non-english bands only. I remember a swedish band, who's name i never remember, absolutely sounding like The Smiths but with swedish vocals. they apparently broke up and the singer did it solo as the swedish Moz.
Cut Off Your Hands are from new zealand. so it is only righteuos the have the freedom to go fully for that Smiths sound. and they do it way better than this swedish act since they don't really sound like a Smiths rip-off. more like the Smiths, not aged a day since the break up, would have gotten back together for a new record in 2008. their debut is more mature and less wild than The Smiths first steps but still it has the dichotomy of sad lyrics for happy pop songs. well, it has a bit of johnny's guitar work and steven's vocal lines. anyway...
people like to go nostalgic about music in the 80s only remembering the songs they still like. but when you find an old 80s compilation record, and i'm talking about an 80's compilation that actually is from the 80s, or see a re-run of old chart shows you realize that almost 90% of the music in the 80s was codswallop. Cut Off Your Hands is a band i wish to be from the 80's so i can still like them today and get nostalgic about the good old days.

Cut Off Your Hands myspace