Single review: Black Soul Strangers – Lies

Black Soul Strangers are from Dublin, and – to judge by their press photos – they’re a handsome foursome of young lads. The sort that Louis Walsh might simultaneously lust for and be repelled by, perhaps; handsome, yes, but with just enough edge to alienate the wholesome mum-thinks-he’s-a-dreamboat-too demographic, just that little bit not-quite-safe-enough. The white highlights on their predominantly black trainers are blindingly white, like they just spent the whole of double French sat at the back of the classroom, carefully painting them with Tippex…

… whoa, and I’m back in the room. Enough of my latent homosexual urges – let’s give their single a spin, shall we? Well, “Lies” ain’t no G’n'R cover, but that was a given, really. What we get is garage-y New-New-Wave indie, rather like The Walkmen mashed up with Snow Patrol; brittle guitars, understated vocals, some good pacey bits and jagged rat-a-tat rhythms… it’s a passing decent song in the post-Bloc Party vein, in other words. But it’s a little flat, somehow, never seems to deliver on its promise of something a little more explosive, less restrained… and it ends just as it starts to get interesting.

And that’s all I can tell you, really, aside from the fact that the original cut of “Lies” ( weighing in at a positively gargantuan three minutes three seconds) has been conveniently cut down to two and a half minutes in the radio edit (kids these days, short attention spans, whoredom of radio to conformist popularity, get off my lawn etc etc etc). Bizarrely, it sounds less incomplete than the full version, though still frustratingly anticlimactic. What else can they do, eh?

Perhaps the entire point is to entice me to follow their every move in hope of hearing new tunes (or maybe just the rest of this one)… that’s crafty marketing, right there. But I suspect I’ll have to share the queue with manny doe-eyed girls of that certain impressionable age, and I’m kinda busy right now. So if someone could drop me a line and let me know when Black Soul Strangers either release a more fulfilling chunk of music (or, alternatively, turn into the boy band that I suspect someone somewhere would just love to make them into), that’d be great. Mwah.