for fans of: Saint Raymond, Coasts, Young Kato, We The Wild, Bad Suns
The Communion Music Group have a refined taste for supporting the freshest new talent. Acts they've previously backed include rock newbies Twin Peaks as well as bona-fide folk stars Ben Howard and Matt Corby. Feel-good pop quintet Amber Run were hand-picked by Communion to headline their second annual sold-out New Faces tour this Autumn. With songs that already sound like hits so early in their career, the world's a stage for the Notts boys. But just who are Amber Run?
No, not Wiz Khalifa's bald ex-wife. They're on all my Spotify playlists, they're frequently played on XFM, their logo was spray painted all over Bristol when I visited this summer, and they have opened for acoustic balladeer Lewis Watson, but I knew little about them. I discovered quickly that they have quite a substantial following, especially in their hometown of Nottingham, but after some digging around the blogs I happened upon some thought-provoking comments. A particular YouTube comment summarises the general feeling as they described the band as "middle-class indie drab". The other night in the cloakroom queue I heard snippets of the following conversation:
Man #1 (early-20s): Did you enjoy it?
Man #2 (mid-20s): I did actually - they're pretty good for posh pop
This kind of thing gets thrown around a lot, and you wonder what it really means. How tightly has capitalism grasped the bottom of the music pile? Are the underground nobodies of bandom actually just another classic example of the rich getting richer? Is there actually anything that bad about "posh pop"? All the rhetorical questions, but no answers.
(Disclaimer: I do not know Amber Run or their background, and so the entirety of the argument below is based upon speculation alone. But I do believe one of the members is called Felix, so.)
Define posh pop: a fairly modern revolution where the music industry has become the latest to fail the working class by ways of capitalism championing the middle and upper-middle classes. Again. Previously, the ones who succeeded in British music were the likes of the McCartneys and the Morrisseys but, in more recent years as the war against the working class wages on, the ones at the top are more likely than not privately educated. Chris Martin, Mumford & Sons, and Florence Welch are the most classic examples, and if I ever have to hear about Lily Allen sing about 'the streets' or 'the ghetto' one more time, I'm going to scream. Noel Gallagher has recently hit out at musicians of socio-economic privilege making it a hot topic of discussion (though in the past month, he's hit out at everyone from Ed Sheeran to Alex Turner, probably all in promotion of his newest album, and to be honest, no one really gives a shit what he says anyway). With funding into arts education slowly being shoved out the window by the Conservative government, the only people that can be educated in music and other arts subjects are the ones who can afford it. Even indie heroes like Peace and Bombay Bicycle Club have come from more privileged upbringings, which begs the question - is success even in this lucrative market still down to genuine talent, or the ability to financially support your way into the big time? Personally, I'm not sure where I stand on the issue: on one hand we don't need to contribute to any more demonization of the working classes - in what fields are we supposed to succeed in then? - but similarly, why should noses be turned up at talented young people because of the way of life they've been born into? It's a complicated matter that I don't feel able to weigh in on just yet.
So what does this mean? In short: nothing. In something as vast, exciting, and innovative as music, backgrounds shouldn't matter. To judge a band shouldn't it really all come down to the most obvious thing? In terms of Amber Run, they're passionate enough about making genuinely good music to drop out of Nottingham Uni and pursue the band dream, hence silencing the classist warriors. With the February leg of their UK tour selling out venues - including Camden's Dingwalls - across the country and an upcoming April tour consisting of some of their biggest headline shows to date, what can distinguish Amber Run from the rest of posh pop?
First it's the range of their appeal. Scattered among the audience was practically everyone within the realms of ages 14-54. Generally, this is a good sign: a nice even mix of people means that you're attracting enough young people to hit the mainstream, enough industry-types to create a buzz and a name for yourself, and enough older people to, err, well, have sing-along drunks in the audience.
The other, fundamental, recipe to their charm is the ability to utilise their talents in all the right places. For example, lead singer Joe Keogh's voice is the definition of divine - with pipes like that it's no way that he couldn't have had a choir boy past. Though strong, composed, and on-key throughout the set, it stood out on chilling opener I Found. Chosen as one of my top 22 tracks of 2014, the five-piece harmonies are just as delicious live as they are on the recorded version and captivated the audience in a split second. With little lights transfixed into the backdrop of the stage, the palatial vocal-synth blend made for a transportation to somewhere glorious.
They continued to churn out stellar tracks throughout the set - a perfectly timed length that made you think "is that it?" before you realise just how much time had flown by while you were enveloped by their joviality. Amber Run craft songs that focus so heavily on impact and so their lyrical weakness becomes a bit more prevalent. But don't sweat it, as a new band, their skill will eventually evolve so that their strengths in punchy instrumentals work in cohesion with a lyrical ability that's not quite there yet.
Nonetheless, crowd interaction is what the band nourish their vigour with. Take Pilot, for example; the commoving first track off the eponymous EP is the definition of a crowd-pleaser. Anthemic, and almost power ballad-esque, without the 80s hair to match. Throbbing drums wizzed around Dingwalls' notoriously questionable sound system before the thunderous impact of the guitars kicked in. This is matched in Spark - a favourite for those who enjoy vigorous hand-clapping and zesty chanting - and the very Mumford and Sons-y Noah. While Kites' rustic acoustic guitars and the charm of Heaven are peachy enough, they don't pack as much punch as some of the other corkers in the Amber Run catalogue.
In response to the two men I overheard in the cloakroom queue: before us are a very important band in terms of putting the fun and games back into music, and shouldn't be overshadowed by whatever label they've been defined as. Posh pop or otherwise.
