What Goes Around

     Some years ago I was taken to a gig in Leicester by an enthusiastic mentor wanting me to see his young band. In truth they weren't that special, but they were put in the shade before they even came on by a spine tingling performance by the previous band.
     I got to see the usurpers many times over the next few months as first the drummer and then the bass were replaced by friends and they became the most talked about band on the local scene.
     The bass was a former rockabilly double bass player who had made it his business to play bass really well when he converted. Drummer was a drum technician who could mimic others' styles at will as well as having a terrific voice of his own. Together they created a set of catchy, sub jazzy rhythms which were punctuated by a sparing, exquisitely timed guitar and the whole rounded off by an eminently marketable cool and occasionally soaring female vocal.
     They could and should have become household names, but bad faith got in the way.
     They engaged a session musician with his own studio as manager, an arrangement which included a fee if he got them signed. This created a conflict of interest which led to him turning down the deal which someone else had already set up. His method of attempting to get a deal involved passing demo's which he recorded to his producer mates.
     These weren't really demo's. Too much production; no scope for development. Who was being showcased here?
     A few months later some of the catchy bass lines were turning up on other people's tracks and he went back to try to resurrect the deal he'd rejected. Nothing doing, and then nothing happened until an outbreak of libidinous behaviour led to a choice between band and marriage.
     Five years later I saw the amazing rhythm section as part of another act on the New Stage at Glastonbury. Nice to see the guys, but bitter sweet as this act didn't scale the heights.
     I had these tapes out recently, wondering how the still unused tracks might suit another voice if updated. There is literally an album's worth of more or less finished product, if that's the way you'd want it. Some great songs, even if in retrospect there is a sense that one can detect of them being written as part of the seduction of the person singing them...
     Within days there was a track on the radio which grabbed my attention. So reminiscent in some ways of this previous favourite band, though with a male vocal and an occasional 'House of the Rising Sun' melody. I was rigid with anticipation when the track finished, but it was one of those annoying occasions when the announcement had been made first and was not repeated.
     It took me a few days to find out, though the good press is everywhere. And no, the best unsigned rhythm section in the world ever have not found their moment in the spotlight.
     The band was Alt-J, the song 'Tesselate', and their album 'An Awesome Wave' is already favourite for the Mercury Prize, before the list is out. Very good, but maybe not quite up to that level of hype for me. Perhaps not a coherent body of work. Certainly no other tracks making me reminisce, and some make me appreciate even more the quality of Ben Howard. But the enjoyment of that brief moment was priceless.