You can write entire tomes on the plethora of bands trying to burst out of London’s bustling underground music scene. Unfortunately, with such a high concentration of musicians vying to be the “next big thing”, many are likely to get lost in the smoke. It takes something increasingly special to escape from the pack as time goes on, but one band looking not just to break the mould, but to smash it to pieces in 2013 is Knocking Ghost.
Sounding like the Human League with a large quantity of gunpowder packed underneath to add a little extra thrust to the sound, the London-based trio have burst onto the scene confidently with their first three tracks giving a very promising first glimpse at the synth-heavy outfit.
Independent Girl romps into life with all the swagger of an ‘80s disco classic, the synth-driven sound a throwback to early New Wave music but with a modern charm to boot. Rob Taylor’s vocals are powerfully yet casually delivered, while Andy Hobson backs up Neil Quinlan’s synth noise with a pounding drum backing that really ties the song together, and it’s surprisingly easy to imagine the track being a persistent floor-filler at any level. There’s nothing overly complex at work here, but the elements that are in play are executed to emphatic success.
‘Independent Girl’ has the potential on its own to launch the band up more than a few rungs of the London music ladder if the right people get a hold of it, so if there’s any track they should be firing off to radio stations and record labels as much as possible, it’s this one, summing up the “New Wave isn’t dead” mantra much better than many bigger artists have been able to in recent years. I’m looking at you, Brandon Flowers.
The strength of ‘Independent Girl’ doesn’t take anything away from following track The Beginning, however. Straight from the start, the track feels like one of those that could light up any room its played in. An atmospheric anthem for the disenchanted, ‘The Beginning’ is a beautiful explosion of sound and Taylor’s vocals are hard not to get caught up in, sounding almost like someone has slipped Chris Martin some MDMA and let him loose at a KOKO club night. Quinlan’s performance is exemplary here too, while Hobson’s drums once again help take the piece’s anthemic sound up a couple notches as the track goes on.
It’s fairly likely that the ‘Beginning’ and ‘Independent Girl’ will be the leading tracks of an eventual first full-length release from Knocking Ghost, which is something that’s very difficult to claim about. For a new band with just three songs to show for themselves at this point, the promise that Knocking Ghost have is quite staggering. The third track is ‘Interlude for the Midweek’, which is, as the title suggests, a small bit of filler that nevertheless allows the chemistry within the band to be showcased once again.
The piece is only two minutes long, but it still manages to keep up the atmospheric sound captured so well by ‘The Beginning’, and hearing this effort extended into a full-length track doesn’t seem like too much to ask for. It’s somewhat pleasing to see that the band can produce equally confident pieces without Taylor’s vocals driving them forward, though ‘Interlude for the Weekend’ undoubtedly has the potential to be turned into a superb track to thrust the band even further into the ionosphere. Until then, however, it still packs a punch that would see it go down well on the club scene, and hearing the band smash it out as well as the tracks that Taylor does sing on cannot come soon enough.
It seems like there is a waiting game to be played while Knocking Ghost work on more music in order to start playing shows and working on a full album or even just an EP release. There is certainly no waiting to be done, however, for the band to start producing fantastic music. It’s rare that bands hit the right notes straight from the start, but in a year that has already produced birthed more than its fair share of promising new acts, it seems that Knocking Ghost have stolen the show right at the very end.
Prepare to hear a lot more of this particular London trio, because while it does take something very special to break from the London music scene, Knocking Ghost have certainly got it.
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