Dance music for people who feel creepy in crowds ...Diamond Rings http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/18/new-band-diamond-rings
Hometown: Toronto, Canada.
The lineup: John O'Regan (vocals, laptop, guitar)
The background: Don't know what it says about us, but we love a man in eye makeup and a new romantic haircut. As soon as we saw the picture of Diamond Rings looking like Ziggy Stardust's sci-fi-obsessed kid brother, we knew we had to feature him here, especially because, having done Ollie Wride on Monday, we thought it would make this week a sort of glam sandwich.
He doesn't sound especially glam, though, not in the sense of glamorous, but then, neither did David
Bowie, and he defined the genre with his songs about the apocalypse suffragettes, and time falling wanking to the floor. John O'Regan, who is Diamond Rings, doesn't sing about female freedom fighters or onanistic abstract concepts (or the apocalypse), he deals in stuff that could, broadly speaking, be termed "aggressively downbeat" and "emotionally raw". And he does so in a lugubrious baritone that is quite at odds with his appearance and frankly unmanly dancing in his videos – the boomy register he uses is somewhere in the region of Iggy circa The Idiot or Phil Oakey all the time. You can hear all the words, too, which is deliberate – not for him the somnolent murmurings of the
chillwave boys. His lyrics read like the terse missives of someone who's been hurt and is hell-bent on revenge, rhyming "raw" and "war" like there's no tomorrow (which there isn't, according to Bowie).
Some of his couplets are quite impressive: "You write my wrongs/I sing all your songs ..." He's like a low-rent Neil Tennant, or rather, Tennant when he wrote Rent. He has two modes, dictated by the two
"instruments" he employs: computer and guitar. So half his songs are laptop pop and the other half are grungy, but because his voice is so prominent in the mix, even the latter are more novelty ditties than
excoriating noise-outs. In fact, All Yr Songs, a catchy strumalong, all tragicomic whingeing and tinny machine beat, is like Jilted John after the jilt's kicked in. "I would not want your skin to burn," he sings, less mincing than menacing, blowtorch in hand. That eye-shadow really is deceptive: he boasts of hanging out with "the freaks and the ghouls".
And on new single Show Your Stuff, he rails: "Save your anaesthetic for the boy next door/Nothing in your needle knocks me out no more." Ouch. And all this over a piano riff like a crude version of Chicago house. The chorus is rousing, only you'd feel a bit daft putting your hands in
the air to, "I'm the kind of boy who likes to play war ... Step up to the plate, come on, show me the score". This is dance music for people who feel creepy in crowds and uncomfortable in their own skin, burnt or otherwise.
The buzz: "A voice that's low and tuneful, beats that are primitive and a stage outfit that includes black spandex tights and pink eye-shadow" – Now Magazine.
The truth: He's the lovechild of Neil Young and Neil Tennant.
Most likely to: Be the prettiest star.
Least likely to: Panic in Detroit.
What to buy: Show Me Your Stuff was released by One Big Silence on 31 June 2010.
File next to: Perfume Genius, Esser, Ollie Wride, Myles Cooper.
Links: myspace.com/diamondringsmusic
No comments:
Post a Comment