Features
Red Stripe Music Award Final 07
Over the course of the tour, numerous acts wowed crowds and Red Stripe aficionados alike but after tough choices, the final six bands played the Scala in London, all stepping forward into the frame of the judges', including XFM's John Kennedy's, minds...
Among the contenders were City Royals: a kind of Clash-like post-Libs band that clasped a stripped down approach by the belly and teased it until only a seedy drum line and progressive guitar remained. Live, they have a simplistic style and Happy Mondays sense of anarchy that, coupled with riffs not too distant from the likes of The Rakes, fall into a captivating funnel of raptness and sub-Mod head bopping circa Jam era punk. The piano hunt of Rosie & The Goldbug otherwise fabricated images of Hot Puppies dancing in the moonlight with No Doubt, and listening to maybe one too many Dresden Dolls LPs.
The Diversity continued into Rory McVicar, a guy who could sit at the same table as Gonzales and Warmsley and hold his own during a tête-à-tête about lyrics. He had possibly the best voice of the evening and definitely gave the winners a run for the money. Had Red Stripe been able to give all the finalists the coveted place at the Great Escape, Rory would have been a compelling addition on the Red Stripe Stage at the Beach Bar. His Damian Rice style of holding back and allowing the vocals to take a natural rise had judges nudging each other and whispering "wow" while they scribbled their notes in a bid to come to their doubtlessly difficult decision.
Leeds band, The Hair are a speedy embrace of modern glittery guitars and youthful exuberance shattered against the walls of new-rave and die hard vocals that splinter like a spinning pinball. Their set stared out with the glare of The Horrors doing Klaxons but the more involved the band become, seething sweaty outgoings through incessant riffs and epic drum n' bass lines, the more it turned into a tightly orchestrated bombarding wall of noise, whirling the beats of a sped-up Muse or Foals echoing operation, lavished with the boldness of Sunshine Underground...massive to behold. Again, these guys made the judges' lives a lot tougher, but may have been slightly too ahead of the curve with cutting-edge hammer thumping, and being debatably too niche. Too much and too soon? Well this crowd didn't seem to mind.
A band very much at the peak of what modern guitar based music is about however, are the crowned Kings of the Red Stripe Music Award The Runners. The Hertford band that incorporate all the jingly bits of The Smiths, and turn them into Maccabee swooning modern pop exploits, instantly gel in your mind which bricked onto a performance that boasts the confidence of Kings Of Leon, sticks to your inner ear and begs transmission. 'Get In Line' has a sound like a song you think you've heard a billion times before, but it makes you sit up and listen, until you realise it's an anthem in the making. It has a hook big enough to bag a giant whale, and with an unrestrictedly outgoing and flamboyant delivery, shunts the playability of this record through the concrete structure of their tunes. This song is alive, festering and breathing, grinding everybody within earshot into chanting along, devoting themselves to a new band, a band with the bang o' The Jam and the wit of Mighty Boosh.
Simon Amstell declared The Runners the winners, but this was a hard choice for the judges. Each band had fought hard to be in the final, having been up against nearly 100 bands throughout the whole contest. The varied styles and genres bring home the reason the Red Stripe Music Award was such a success, and just goes to show that Red Stripe's affinity with music is well deserved. The music of today may have grown from the lager's Jamaican roots, but the passion and dedication that these bands, and the bands throughout the whole tour have shown, is like a salute to those people who first bumped and grind to reggae rhythms on the beaches of Jamaica with a Red Stripe in hand. There is no doubt that The Runners won't be the only band to benefit from the Red Stripe Music Award. Unsigned bands from across the whole country have now had the chance to play in front of music-industry bods, whilst building their fanbase and adding friends to their myspace pages. These awards have given new bands a chance that is so hard to come by. Red Stripe is doing it for the bands and the fans, and for that, I'm going to crack open a can, and rejoice in the fact that I may have just witnessed the next era of rock n' roll. We'll see y'all next year for the second shout, but until then, keep an eye out for all the artists that made the Red Stripe Music Award tour so damn good.
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