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The New Tellers

Some People Make Things Better

Label: Crystal Songs Release Date: 06/05/2002

dmerryweather by David Merryweather May 8th, 2002

Shambling indie. Ambling, rambling indie. Baked beans on toast on the lap in front of Countdown indie. Just popping down to the corner shop for a Pot Mash and a bag of Nik-Naks indie. Asking the girl in Kwik Save if she would like to go out for a drink later but she smiles and says thanks but she’s going with her boyfriend to see that Ali G movie instead indie. A walk home through the park, stopping to glumly watch the ducks then it starts to drizzle indie. Soaked through cords and mud all over your trainers indie. Practising new songs for you and your mates from uni’s indie band when your mum comes up and tells you that next door are complaining about the noise again indie. Co-Op own brand fish-fingers indie. Socks and Y-fronts draped over the radiator indie. Ramshackle, clattering, clutterbucket indie. Calling songs things like ‘You Can Be Sure (Someone Always Knows)’ and ‘Some People Make Things Better’ indie. Send a demo to Radio One, Steve Lamacq will like it indie. Y’know... indie.

1999s ‘In The City’ winning indie band, The New Tellers have released this, an ep of clumsy but still quite charming but still quite scrappy indie songs that, I imagine, would feel at home on the NME’s epochal 'C-86' tape - not that I’ve ever heard it or anything, but The New Tellers seem to be obeisant to that simpler, pre-acid house, Smiths-dominated world of sensitive/weedy (take your pick) pale boys with guitars.

David Brewis’ plaintive vocals are suitably dishwater thin and the backing is wayward but inventive, utilising primitive sounding electronics to bolster out the sound which is further augmented with coo-ing backing harmonies and fey, slightly self-consciously poetic and vague lyrics.

It may all seem wishy-washy indie-by-numbers, and maybe it is, but the title track alone is a fine old, big, daft, baggy jumper, shoe laces come untied, heart-warming indie track. Even so, catchy but patchy, it doesn’t help that it sounds as if it was recorded in someone's mate’s dads garage on a 1970s tape recorder, but there’s enough going on to perhaps warrant hope for the future.

But then, as for the final track, a semi-instrumental doodle, I can only judge it in the same way one would a toddlers gaudy crayon scribble ‘Oh, er, that’s nice. What, uhm, is it?’

I want to be nice (I’m trying to be, we’re on the same side, them and me), but programmed electronic percussion and dreamy, opaque, winsome lyrics aside there really isn’t much here (yet) that catches the ear and stands out from the everyday greyness of hundreds of other indie bands.

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