Bombay Bicycle ClubOne of the advantages of being constantly online and plugged into social networks, blogs, videos, films and websites is that you’re always coming across new music and bands through recommendations, mentions and background scores. When I come across a song I like I usually look it up through its lyrics or mentions and track down as much of the band’s or artist’s discography as I can find online.

In light of these occasional gems that I come across from time to time, I’ve decided to start a new section called Brand New Bands, where I’ll be writing about and compiling songs by interesting new or hitherto obscure bands and artists.

I came across Bombay Bicycle Club a few weeks back, while looking up Lucy Rose, who is a very talented British artist. Bombay Bicycle Club are Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, Suren de Saram and Ed Nash, who’ve been together as a band since the rather tender age of fifteen. They burst onto the Indie music scene when they won the Road to V competition and opened for the V Festival. The only thing the band’s name has to do with Bombay is probably the fact that it’s where I’m writing this article from; they chose to call themselves this after a chain of Indian restaurants in the UK.

I usually go chronologically, but since first impressions matter, I’m going to introduce one of their cheeriest tracks to open this article. This is called Ivy & Gold; note that the video is pretty much recorded in one take (with a bunch of people bursting in and dancing around halfway through).

They’re also pretty good live; this is their performance of Lamplight, one of my favourite tracks off their 2009 debut album “I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose“, at Glastonbury. Following that is their very quirky video of the song “Always Like This“.


Playlist wise, the next song to listen to would be Magnet, but since that particular video wasn’t embeddable when I looked it up, I’ve hotlinked it instead. We’re now going to move onto their next album, Flaws, which released in 2010. Ivy & Gold, the opening track to this article, is from this album. This is Rinse Me Down.

Their videos are usually quite quirky and offbeat, though this following video of the song Dust on the ground borders on creepy and looks like it was inspired by The Others. Like Rinse Me Down, this song also has a predominantly acoustic sound.

A Different Kind Of Fix, was released this year (2011). The first single released off the album is Shuffle, which has a sound that seems to (in my opinion) sit on the borderline between folk and alternative rock.

I’d like to conclude with a segue to our next artist, Lucy Rose. This is the title track to the album Flaws, a light peaceful acoustic track sung as a duet between Jack Steadman and Lucy.

The members of the band only recently finished school and already have three very good albums under their belts, which means they’re going to be a very interesting band to follow because they quite literally have the rest of their adult lives ahead of them, through which to mature (even though their sound is already quite mature), change and age.

More info about their new releases and gigs at http://www.bombaybicycleclubmusic.com/.

Special thanks to YouTube channel and user BandsInTransit and daimiel69, with Bombay Bicycle Club’s official channel bombaybicycleclubtv for all the videos.