Does Your Heart Go Boom When He Walks In The Room?
So back when I was at university, there was band called Helen Love, who were a lo-fi bubblegum-punk-Ramones-fan-band from Swansea who recorded (initially) in someone's bedroom. As it happens our flat went to one of their earliest gigs (somewhere in the first 5 because they mostly recorded in bedrooms rather than played live) and in honour of it I decorated my lecture notes folder in the style of their song Punk Boy[1],[3]. All this can probably be blamed on credited to Ben, a man with great taste in and passion for music.
Anyway, the point is although (as the Wikipedia page puts it) "none of their singles have yet troubled the UK Top 40" they're still making records. New records that sound just like the old ones. It's somewhere between brilliant and troubling; brilliant because I can dance around the kitchen just like it's 1994 and troubling for exactly the same reason.
Anyway, they have a new single coming out called Calm Down Dad on the 26th January. On 7" vinyl only. If there's one thing we can depend on it's Helen Love not selling out and becoming commercial[5].
[1] I'd been given a bunch of sticky gold and silver stars and my manly flatmates were generally opposed to that kind of thing being used to decorate The Space Age Bachelor Pad[2], so it was good to find a use for them.
[2] Named after a Stereolab album.
[3] Inexplicably[4] this song isn't on Youtube. If you go to the Helen Love Myspace Page, it's track 3 on their jukebox thing. Ash had an early hit with a cover of Punk Boy injecting slightly more punk to the record; here's a live video from September 2008, and it's just like seeing and hearing them play it in August 1994, except if you were that far from the stage in the Penny Theatre you'd be out the front and across the road, and to get the real experience it should be played in a sauna.
[4] Explication: no fan videos and it appears no one has managed to catch Helen Love playing live.
[5] From the Helen Love website: "And maybe download too. Probably. It would be silly not to... I'll try and let you know where from nearer the time."
Anyway, the point is although (as the Wikipedia page puts it) "none of their singles have yet troubled the UK Top 40" they're still making records. New records that sound just like the old ones. It's somewhere between brilliant and troubling; brilliant because I can dance around the kitchen just like it's 1994 and troubling for exactly the same reason.
Anyway, they have a new single coming out called Calm Down Dad on the 26th January. On 7" vinyl only. If there's one thing we can depend on it's Helen Love not selling out and becoming commercial[5].
[1] I'd been given a bunch of sticky gold and silver stars and my manly flatmates were generally opposed to that kind of thing being used to decorate The Space Age Bachelor Pad[2], so it was good to find a use for them.
[2] Named after a Stereolab album.
[3] Inexplicably[4] this song isn't on Youtube. If you go to the Helen Love Myspace Page, it's track 3 on their jukebox thing. Ash had an early hit with a cover of Punk Boy injecting slightly more punk to the record; here's a live video from September 2008, and it's just like seeing and hearing them play it in August 1994, except if you were that far from the stage in the Penny Theatre you'd be out the front and across the road, and to get the real experience it should be played in a sauna.
[4] Explication: no fan videos and it appears no one has managed to catch Helen Love playing live.
[5] From the Helen Love website: "And maybe download too. Probably. It would be silly not to... I'll try and let you know where from nearer the time."
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