Logo
DiS Needs You: Save our site »
  • Logo_home2
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • In Photos
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Search
  • Community
  • Records
  • In Depth
  • Blog
  • Community

THIS SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND CLOSED.

Please join the conversation over on our new forums »

If you really want to read this, try using The Internet Archive.

Friendly Fries

Paris

Label: Moshi Moshi Music Release Date: 10/12/2007

29653
sean by Sean Adams December 10th, 2007

Ghetto-dwelling, dank-smelling, P’fork-reading pop naysayers beware: you are going to hate this. It doesn’t reinvent anything. It doesn’t challenge anyone. It won’t win you any indie point wars, for they have already been on Channel 4, the first unsigned band in fact to be featured on Transmission. This song will refuse to be a cult classic and much like ‘Oh My God’, ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’ and ‘Darts of Pleasure’ it’ll haunt you in steakhouses, office parties and within festival fences for years to come. You’ll find the lyrics overly simplistic and ever so saccharine, the hugely sentimental story of escapist boyhood romance will frustrate you but that’s fine because you’ve got documentaries about bands no-one’s ever heard of to watch and limited-edition vinyl to carefully brush the dust off of. You’ll deal with it, but it won’t give you the dumb smile I can’t currently wipe off.

Pop predictors, ready? Hey ho! Let’s go… “One day, we’re gonna live, in Paris, I promise, I’m on it!” And so begins the whirl of one of the most exciting singles of the year. It’s a post-p’funk dreamscape of slithering shoegaze guitars and cowbells. These are St. Albans kids who’ve swallowed the party pills of LCD, embraced the geeky-lilt of Hot Chip and tied it together with some won’t-leave-you-for-weeks sweaty hooks as instantly infectious as the clap, The Kooks or Kylie. All of which is conjured together as both an open invitation to dance and an assault upon your neurons.

It’s not genius, nor magic, but this is how you take what you know and love and write a pop song that’s as much for white van man as the cute girl in the second row barely wearing her Sonic Youth t-shirt. However, what’s most worrying about these fresh-faced kids is that they have a ton of songs like ‘Paris’, many of which will be bothering you and the charts for much of next year.

_“…And every night, the city liiiights, they’ll be out for us, they’ll be out for us!

And every night, we’ll watch the stars, they’ll be out for us, they’ll be out for us!”_

However, don’t doubt me when this isn’t a instantly certifiable hit; the modern pop paradigm is all about timing and there’s something undoubtedly timely dropping this just as everyone is preparing their Tips For Next Year lists, but having seen carcasses thrown around to this at Latitude earlier this year, it’s clearly a case of doing one of those heavily marketed, radio-playlist plying, major label re-releases the week after Glastonbury and Friendly Fires becoming the band of the summer. Now that I can predict; nay, I promise.

“This time next year, we’ll be forevermore…”

Read more reviews of this week's singles here

  • 9
    Sean Adams's Score
Log-in to rate this record out of 10
Share on
   
Love DiS? Become a Patron of the site here »


LATEST


  • Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024


  • Drowned in Sound is back!


  • Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Year: 2020


  • Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter


  • Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing


  • Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alternative must sees



Left-arrow

Midnight Juggernauts at Hoxton Bar & Grill, London, South East England, Wed 21 Nov

Mobback
29624
29723

Alexander Tucker, Vic Chesnutt at Koko, Camden Town, Mon 19 Nov

Mobforward
Right-arrow


LATEST

    news


    Why Music Journalism Matters in 2024

  • 106145
  • news


    Drowned in Sound is back!

  • 106143

    news


    Drowned in Sound's 21 Favourite Albums of the Y...

  • 106141
  • news


    Drowned in Sound to return as a weekly newsletter

  • 106139

    Playlist


    Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing

  • 106138
  • Festival Preview


    Glastonbury 2019 preview playlist + ten alterna...

  • 106137

    Interview


    A Different Kind Of Weird: dEUS on The Ideal Crash

  • 106136
  • Festival Review


    Way Out East: DiS Does Sharpe Festival 2019

  • 106135
MORE


    news


    The Neptune Music Prize 2016 - Vote Now

  • 103918
  • Takeover


    The Winner Takes It All

  • 50972

    Takeover


    10 Things To Not Expect Your Record Producer To...

  • 93724
  • review


    The Mars Volta - Deloused In The Comatorium

  • 4317

    review


    Sonic Youth - Nurse

  • 6044
  • feature


    New Emo Goth Danger? My Chemical Romance confro...

  • 89578

    feature


    DiS meets Justice

  • 27270
  • news


    Our Independent music filled alternative to New...

  • 104374
MORE

Drowned in Sound
  • DROWNED IN SOUND
  • HOME
  • SITE MAP
  • NEWS
  • IN DEPTH
  • IN PHOTOS
  • RECORDS
  • RECOMMENDED RECORDS
  • ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
  • FESTIVAL COVERAGE
  • COMMUNITY
  • MUSIC FORUM
  • SOCIAL BOARD
  • REPORT ERRORS
  • CONTACT US
  • JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
  • FOLLOW DiS
  • GOOGLE+
  • FACEBOOK
  • TWITTER
  • SHUFFLER
  • TUMBLR
  • YOUTUBE
  • RSS FEED
  • RSS EMAIL SUBSCRIBE
  • MISC
  • TERM OF USE
  • PRIVACY
  • ADVERTISING
  • OUR WIKIPEDIA
© 2000-2025 DROWNED IN SOUND