The Magic Gang - The Magic Gang
The Guardian 80
(Warner Bros/YALA!)
The last time major labels were signing amiable, jangly indie bands came in the aftermath of Creation Records’s dissolution, when Columbia Records attempted to turn Teenage Fanclub’s Britpop-adjacent success into hot cash.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t work, and the two parties amicably parted ways.
Continue reading... Fri Mar 16 09:00:01 GMT 2018Drowned In Sound 70
Let's be honest, we all love a boyband. You can try brush it off, tell yourself that you don’t. Pretend to yourself and everyone else that you’re above all of that nonsense. But everyone loves a boyband. The cheekbones. The outrageous clothing. The harmonies. And above all the choruses. In recent years as well, your favourite bands have come out in favour of them. Swim Deep said they wanted to be as big as One Direction. Yeah Noel Gallagher has endlessly attacked them, but simpletons always hate what they can’t understand.
If you’re still not able to bring yourself to outright admit that instead of quietly nodding along to Oneohtrix Point Never’s latest offering, you’d rather be yelling along to 'Never Forget' by Take That, then The Magic Gang, and their new The Magic Gang EP (imaginative, I know) are here to fill in the gap for you.
Firstly, to settle your inhibitions, they’ve got the credentials. They toured last year with Wolf Alice AND the EP was produced by Dreamtrak, who has twiddled the knobs for both Foals and Swim Deep. So yeah, got that side of it covered for you.
The Magic Gang EP is the band's first, having only previously released one single, the dark, grungy 'No Fun'. The new tracks are a departure from this, replacing the menacing with the woozy, and polishing off the grit to leave shiny collage rock songs. Chuck in some deliciously fun basslines and some three-part harmonies and you’ve got yourself a band that are a weird mix between Weezer, early Duran Duran and um One Direction. Stick with me here.
Take first track, and first single, 'Jasmine'. It’s got some nice breezy chords, cheesy lyrics pondering “When the sky turns blue/ but it starts to rain on you” and, most importantly, a massive chorus with that kind of shouting-but-not-really-shouting that all boybands do so well. You could imagine a dance routine choreographed for it, maybe a getting off the stool moment, definitely a lot of screaming girls.
The EP has loads of these moments. 'Feeling Better' is the song that should have played when that girl you fancied said no to going to prom with you, all Fifties reverb and heartache. 'Lady, Please' has a chugging bassline and off-beat guitar nicked right off an early Police track, but with a fuzzy solo chucked in just for fun. It’s an EP full of an almost twee level of longing (“Told me I was wrong/ every time I showed you any song”), and yeah it’s kind of formulaic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun.
The Magic Gang may not be breaking any new ground. But that’s fine as long as they continue to be this much fun.
Fri May 27 00:00:00 GMT 2016Drowned In Sound 70
Much-discussed Brighton band The Magic Gang release their first album to the most anticipation we've seen around a debut for a while, which is remarkable considering the supposed lack of interest in guitar bands in the industry currently. The self-titled The Magic Gang runs at 12 tracks, with the four-piece group selecting carefully from their raft of early-career fan favourites and their newer, different sounding music. With a large bank of songs from the past few years, listeners can expect the cream of the crop; a kind of early greatest hits from the band whose first LP has been in the works for some time.
Currently suffering the predicament of many new bands of being mainly defined by and compared to their influences, the Magic Gang’s situation is nothing new, and the members have extensively discussed who they look up to. What is novel about the band is their seamless approach and combination of a very mixed bag of musical styles. Opener ‘Oh Saki’ does sound like The Cribs, but on ‘Take Care’ they also sound like a reincarnated Beach Boys (not a criticism ). The Magic Gang pulls off this array of sounds with mastery, performing the exceptionally difficult trick of drawing together all the circles to create a near-perfect Venn diagram intersection. Each track is diverse and different, whilst still sounding like it resoundingly belongs to them. Bustling with exuberance, the songs combine simple yet effective lyrics with sumptuous harmonies and memorable hooks.
The first half of the album is characterised by high energy, fast-paced songs, best shown by raucous singalong ‘All This Way’ and ‘Getting Along’. At points these are in danger of blurring into each other but I think this may just be because of the specific order they’re listed in. One song which has the tendency to cloy is ‘Caroline’, perhaps just because of the repetition in the chorus. However, it’s more than redeemed by the other tracks at the start of the record.
The second half of the record is quieter, with a more musing outlook. ‘Slippin’ provides a combination of quieter verse mixed with the more energetic tones and sunny guitar chords seen earlier in the tracklisting, while ‘Your Love’ declares morosely: “I feel the rain roll down the windowsill, if I could only feel your touch”, perhaps one of the first points in the album where the lyrics have felt more important than the sonic elements. Defiant, punchy ‘How Can I Compete’ adds a dash of bittersweet stubbornness to the works. Final track ‘All That I Want Is You’ has been inspired by the memoirs of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and is strangely winning, although I’m not sure I 100 per cent understand what it means yet.
This album is extremely enjoyable, filled with a wealth of emotions and exquisitely executed. The exciting uniqueness of the Magic Gang makes for fantastic listening and I’m really looking forward to seeing what else they have up their sleeves.
Fri Mar 16 16:42:26 GMT 2018