Varsity
It may have only been a few weeks since Chicago's Varsity, were featured on these very pages, but seeing as the band are back with a brand new digital single, "Eye to eye" / "Kelly" and it really is good (in a "fucking hell this is great..." kind of way), there's absolutely no excuse not to write about them again.
Varsity are a pop group. They record pop songs and make pop records... But these are not your bland, anaemic and formalistic daytime-radio-keep-the-advertisers-happy pop songs. No, these songs grab you by the shoulders and so shake you to the core that they leave you wondering why - in this day and age - you can't turn on the radio and be guaranteed to hear something this fresh and this exceptional...
In many respects both "Eye to eye" / "Kelly" and the band's previous digital single "Cult of personality" / "So sad, so sad" are cut from the same cloth. Once again the band expertly couple a wedge of state-of-the-art up-tempo guitar-fuelled indie-pop with the most gorgeous of slow-burning slices of dreamy and melancholic soulful pop...
I'm not going to give too much away, but if duelling, jangling guitars are your thing then you really need to take a listen to Dylan Weschler and Pat Stanton as they treat the intro of "Eye to eye" to a twelve string melodic wash over the gentle metronomic beat. Meanwhile Stephanie Smith's vocals switch seamlessly from the song's wry - and straight out of the Bethany Cosentino playbook - opening verse "...I wake up, hang out, Wondering if it was my idea, To pass up a handout, Isn't that just like me...", to introspective and self-questioning; "...Was I really so wrong not to let you go..." Trust me, this is quality indie-pop - bouncy, hummable and one that raids your record collection to borrow all the best bits... You need to get yourself a fix of pretty sharpish...
With "Kelly" Stephanie's dreamy vocals float becalmed on a ocean of reverbed guitars and drawn out fuzzy synths. It's a melancholy song, there's a beguiling fluctuation in her voice - an apologetic cry of exasperation - Stephanie's apologies are rebuffed, but there's only so many times she's going to say sorry. I do like my tunes tinged with a soupçon of sadness and once again Varsity demonstrate that they expertly straddle that blurry boundary between dream-pop and melancholy.
"Eye to eye" and "Kelly" are seven minutes of sonic goodness that not only confirms that Varsity are keen students of Agnès Gayraud's (La Féline) concept of 'moderne, c'est déjà vieux', more importantly it establishes them as the consummate purveyors of timeless pop.
Varsity are a pop group. They record pop songs and make pop records... But these are not your bland, anaemic and formalistic daytime-radio-keep-the-advertisers-happy pop songs. No, these songs grab you by the shoulders and so shake you to the core that they leave you wondering why - in this day and age - you can't turn on the radio and be guaranteed to hear something this fresh and this exceptional...
In many respects both "Eye to eye" / "Kelly" and the band's previous digital single "Cult of personality" / "So sad, so sad" are cut from the same cloth. Once again the band expertly couple a wedge of state-of-the-art up-tempo guitar-fuelled indie-pop with the most gorgeous of slow-burning slices of dreamy and melancholic soulful pop...
I'm not going to give too much away, but if duelling, jangling guitars are your thing then you really need to take a listen to Dylan Weschler and Pat Stanton as they treat the intro of "Eye to eye" to a twelve string melodic wash over the gentle metronomic beat. Meanwhile Stephanie Smith's vocals switch seamlessly from the song's wry - and straight out of the Bethany Cosentino playbook - opening verse "...I wake up, hang out, Wondering if it was my idea, To pass up a handout, Isn't that just like me...", to introspective and self-questioning; "...Was I really so wrong not to let you go..." Trust me, this is quality indie-pop - bouncy, hummable and one that raids your record collection to borrow all the best bits... You need to get yourself a fix of pretty sharpish...
With "Kelly" Stephanie's dreamy vocals float becalmed on a ocean of reverbed guitars and drawn out fuzzy synths. It's a melancholy song, there's a beguiling fluctuation in her voice - an apologetic cry of exasperation - Stephanie's apologies are rebuffed, but there's only so many times she's going to say sorry. I do like my tunes tinged with a soupçon of sadness and once again Varsity demonstrate that they expertly straddle that blurry boundary between dream-pop and melancholy.
"Eye to eye" and "Kelly" are seven minutes of sonic goodness that not only confirms that Varsity are keen students of Agnès Gayraud's (La Féline) concept of 'moderne, c'est déjà vieux', more importantly it establishes them as the consummate purveyors of timeless pop.
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