No 217: Bombay Bicycle Club

Today, Paul Lester reports on a band that not only come from the same part of London as Cajun Dance Party - they're in the same year at school
Bombay Bicycle Club
Bombay Bicycle Club loitering

Hometown: London.

The lineup: Jack Steadman (vocals, guitars, bass), Jamie MacColl (guitars, bass, vocals), Suren De Saram (drums, chanting), Ed Nash (bass, keyboards).

The background: Bombay Bicycle Club, formerly Mumbai Tandem Organisation, don't just come from the same part of London as the hysterically touted Cajun Dance Party - the Crouch End/Highgate/Tufnell Park axis of indie evil - they're in the same year of the same school, which makes it something of an alt.rock Fame Academy. Doesn't it? A cursory listen to the BBC (the band, not the broadcaster) EP How We Are suggests New York art rock is on the curriculum and they offer GCSE dreampop, with an option at A Level to study leftfield loft life in the Bowery. You can hear in their music elements of the Strokes' agitated energy and also some of the shoegazey blurriness of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth circa their late-80s reinvention of the guitar, as it was known in the now-defunct Melody Maker, and perhaps you can see now why it's defunct. Their sound is derivative but accomplished, if that's not a contradiction in terms or a crazy paradox, but it does make us think bands arrive fully-formed these days wearing their influences on their sleeve but don't always progress beyond that point. But let's not get too serious because we've got enough on our plates with lessons and exams and stuff.

Or at least BBC, who are in their final year of school, have. They might be so young they only play live on Saturdays and had to get permission from their mums just to appear in this column, but they've already got plenty to put on their UCCA forms. They formed last year, soon entering the Road To V competition, which they won, opening the festival in August 2006. Their debut EP was called The Boy I Used To Be and was released on their own imprint: Mmm... That's not us contemplating the nature of existence, it's the name of the label. They recorded their latest EP, How We Are, over the summer with Jim Abbiss, who's worked with Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian and DJ Shadow, during which sessions they drank lashings of ginger beer and frolicked with Timmy the dog. But while the band's youth is detectable and their melodies delectable, there's a surprising wealth of experience in Steadman's "tripped-out Casablancas" holler and these songs about drugs and girls, growing up and never wanting to grow old. Now they just need to grow out of their obsession with Brooklyn's rockin' demimonde, or grow beyond it.

The buzz: "Music so precociously intelligent and artful that it seems to have been beamed down from another planet."

The truth: The coordinates are preordained, the music's trajectory predictable, but their promise is tremendous.

Most likely to: Be asked lots in interviews about their connection with harbours on the West Coast of India. And bicycles, and clubs formed in their honour.

Least likely to: Lose their fixation with Is This It and Isn't Anything.

File next to: The Strokes, Sonic Youth, Television, the Velvets.

What to buy: The How We Are EP is released by Mmm... on Monday.

Links: MySpace page Official site

Tomorrow's new band: Dude 'N Nem.

Paul Lester

Most popular