Track of the day

TRACK: Tak O Tak

WHO: Midlands four-piece ‘mistakists’ Stricken City, fronted by the style-mag queen-in-waiting Rebekah Raa.

WHAT: Loose-limbed guitar pop magic.

HYPE: “Awesomely spiky new wave pop.” - Pinglewood

WE SAY: See, now in this age when the concept of indie is little more than another category for Woolworths to file their Cds under, it’s nice to have a reminder, no matter how small, of how it used to be; a time before the seismic cultural shift of Manchester ’89, when there truly was a line in the sand that split the glossy mainstream and the rough-edged margins.

Stricken City have a floppy, just-short-of-fully-formed form that is beyond endearing and reaks of tiny records labels, the Festive Fifty and musty record shops down back alleys. Obviously, the entire world has decided that taking cues from the Eighties is the only acceptable modus operandi, but along with the du jour post-punk touches, the band also offer a number of other signifiers - maybe accidentally - that aren’t getting rinsed at the moment; the untreated, simple guitar sounds of The Wedding Present and the innate, almost-accidental groove of the Sugarcubes are manna to the ears and a ctrl-alt-delete on the musical torpor that is always so close at hand.

Starting out with a proto-keyboard riff that may very well have been used on some obscuro piece of east European animation and welding it to a solid metronomic beat, Tak O Tak effortlessly unfolds as a gorgeous three minutes of lens-flare pop, made all the more palatable by Raa’s voice, which achieves the perfect balance of being exemplary without drowning in its own excellence. More please.

IF YOU ONLY NEED TO KNOW ONE THING: Ahead of the single’s release, you can head over to their website for an exclusive download

WHERE CAN I GET MY HANDS ON IT: Tak O Tak is released on 7” on Adventures Close To Home on July 28.

FIND MORE: www.strickencity.com

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