london, music

Rated & Retarded: The Shoestrung

Having utilised this long May Bank Holiday to sift through some new music, I was becoming increasingly despondent as I ploughed through calamitous punk bands from Brooklyn, a ’supergroup’ formed of 14 year olds from North London, clearly being pushed to fulfill a mummy or daddy’s failed dream until I stumbled across something like a kid who’s had his shoes tied together by the robustly built school bully.

Image Courtesy of Digital Spy, nice one.

As a fan of The Small Faces, The Animals and other such epicentres of authentic British music you can understand (once you’ve listen to them of course) why I was pleasantly surprised by The Shoestrung. Drawn in by “I’d Love to See You Get Knocked Down” (which I assume isn’t an inference to Vehicular manslaughter and is shown below) which harks back to the era of said UK greats. However, there’s more here than a simple revivalist movement; “I Only Smoke to Burn A Hole In You” brings it down a notch which suggests their upcoming acoustic gig at the Queen Boudicea (5th May) could hold some surprises. Bleed Steam for Blood will get the crowd going but the stand-out track for me is “I’m Blind You See”.

Check out their myspace here.

My pick would be their gig at the Good Ship in Kilburn on 30th May due to the fact their gig at Proud on 29th June is likely to be full of an unbearably high hit-rate of cunts.

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