Thursday, May 29

SOUTH

SOUTH: what an incredibly forgettable, generic, unGoogleable name for a band. Hell, why not just call yourselves Beige? Or Bland? Or Yawn? (Though, come to think of it, some dream-pop outfit out there might do pretty well with Yawn.)

South is/are a London trio who have been mentored by the likes of THE STONE ROSES' IAN BROWN and UNKLE's JAMES LAVELLE. I first became aware of them with their 2001 album, FROM HERE ON IN. At the time, I considered them a sort of shoegaze version of TRAVIS (damn those Brits & their incredibly forgettable, generic, unGoogleable names! Why not Bob? Or Bill? Or Larry?)

Generally-speaking, South are a standard, guitar-centric Britpop band with a few electronic accoutrements. Indeed, every now and again, they can sound quite a lot like NEW ORDER (see/hear "A Place in Displacement" below). The new album, YOU ARE HERE, dropped in April.

SOUTH on MySPACE.

From the LP YOU ARE HERE, 2008 >>>
[
MP3] "The Pain"
[
MP3] "Lonely Highs"

From the LP ADVENTURES IN THE UNDERGROUND JOURNEY TO THE STARS, 2006 >>>
[
MP3] "A Place in Displacement"
[
MP3] "Safety in Numbers"

From the LP WITH THE TIDES, 2003 >>>
[
MP3] "Loosen Your Hold"
[
MP3] "Silver Sun"

From the LP FROM HERE ON IN, 2001 >>>
[
MP3] "Too Much Too Soon"
[
MP3] "All in for Nothing"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with the name probably bein' hard to google - but they are VERY easy to listen to. The new album is great. With this thing called "hooks" that I think I missed in their earlier work. My three favorite tracks on it are "Better Things", "Wasted" and 'Tell Me". I'm sure this album will survive and stay in my Top Ten list this year. I keep going back to it.