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Grammatics
John Grant - 19/10/07
"We're never going to be as big as Editors or Bloc Party - our music's too leftfield for Joe Public," insists Grammatics singer and guitarist Owen Brinley, "but on the other side of the coin we are a pop band, we're very melodic and I believe the songs are really catchy, so that could sell us records."
From many new acts, such a statement might come across as presumptuous, or even cocky, but we've heard enough from Grammatics over these past few months to know Brinley's entitled to make such claims about his band's music.
Indeed, songs like 'The Vague Archive', 'The Shipping Forecast' and forthcoming debut single 'Shadow Committee' are just as the singer describes them: intensely tuneful, musically ambitious and far from straightforward. At the same time, their layered melodies burrow deep into your skull and simply refuse to leave.
Grammatics formed in April 2006. At the time, college friends Brinley and Dominic Ord (drums) were running a club night, Grammar, in York.
"York's a cultural wasteland," says the singer, "and we wanted somewhere for people like us to go. We believed they existed."
The pair first met at music college, realised they had a lot in common (not least a love of Britpoppers Blur) and began running Grammar together. The idea for the band came about partly as a result of their disillusionment with the live music scene in Leeds, the city they both call home.
This was at the time when The Libertines hadn't succumbed to crack and smack and The Strokes were still one of hottest new bands on the scene. A host of drainpipe clad imitators sprang up in Yorkshire, much to Brinley's dissatisfaction.
"We'd watch bands together and think 'there's nothing here for us'," he recalls.
"Every band in Leeds was stripped down, minimalist punk-rock. We wanted something a lot grander, I suppose."
They recruited a cellist, Rebecca Dumican, via the York music scene and a bassist, Rory O'Hara, whose band had supported Brinley's old outfit, Colour Of Fire. With the lineup now complete, the initial problem was trying to capture the sounds and ideas Brinley and Ord had in their heads - as well as remembering how to play!
"We wanted to sound like an absolute mess, but a very controlled, calculated mess," explains the singer.
"We wanted it to be complicated, which was a difficult thing to achieve at first because we'd collected a group of musicians who were very out of practice in terms of playing live and with other people."
It's this determination to do things differently that distinguishes Grammatics' music from the rest of the indie crowd. In their heavier moments, there are echoes of American bands like Cursive and The Dismemberment Plan but Brinley's falsetto is distinctively English. Like all the best music, categorising their oeuvre is tricky - our advice is to buy the single or catch them on their October tour and decide for yourself.
* Shadow Committee is released on limited edition 7"/download via Dance To The Radio on October 22nd.
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