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The Boy Least Likely To
No matter how much my taste changes, I will never, ever be over my search for the perfect pop song. Just as last year, on this very blog, I often confessed that I would never be over power pop, and the same follows for twee pop as well.
The Boy Least Likely To are quite possibly the most deliciously, unabashedly twee band I've heard in ages, which is nice -- because once upon a time long, long ago (and by that, I mean the mid/late 90s), there were many, many twee bands. These days it seems like there's tons of boppy dancerock bands and gloomy progcountryemo bands and ultratrendy bands with 'Wolf' in their names. A twee band would never, ever be called anything wolfish, except maybe Wolf Hugs or Cuddle Wolf or uh, Wolf Parade or something like that.
Oh, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of twee-ness out there to be had, mind you: Architecture in Helsinki, The Go! Team, Tender Trap, Acid House Kings, Labrador, The Rosebuds, The Brunettes, and The Pipettes are taking chipper pop in new and interesting directions. But only The Boy Least Likely To is singing songs about monsters who get married and have baby monsters and take them on walks in prams around the town that turns into an indictment of suburban blandness; songs that feature glockenspeils and banjos and recorders and handclaps and xylophones -- not to mention sweetly pained lyrics and catchy, earwormy choruses.
And okay, I'm probably not going to sell you dark little gloomcookies out there who are too cool for anything cute and adorable on the merits of The Boy Least Likely To, but hear me out. Jof Owen (vocals and lyrics) and Pete Hobbs (multi-instrumentalist and composer), the rural English bedroom popsters who make up The Boy Least Likely To, are solid musicians and great songwriters. One of the band's best songs, "I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star," a delerious number full of wonderful contradictions that manages to unabashedly quote liberally from the entire back catalog of The Beatles and ELO and Blur simultaneously without being at all annoying about it (as, well, most of their songs do -- and really, I promise, they don't sound at all like Belle and Sebastian, no matter what other music writers have said), mentions a 'country disco band,' and honestly, I'd much rather sell you on the fact that that's exactly what The Boy Least Likely Is, actually: A country disco band. A country disco band that worries about death and turning into dull, plodding adults. A country disco band that compares the painful hearbreak of unrequited love to paper cuts. But maybe this isn't winning you over either.
Time to bring out the big guns, then. Go look at this picture (the achingly sweet art for The Boy Least Likely To's graphic idenity is created by an artist simply known as Tim) and give a listen to the songs below. And if you don't like them, well, heck -- we'll soon be covering gobs of bands that sing angsty songs in dark rooms and holler a whole lot. Promise!
The Boy Least Likely To - I'm Glad I Hitched My Apple Wagon To Your Star
The Boy Least Likely To - Paper Cuts
The Boy Least Likely To - Monsters
The Boy Least Likely To's official site. The band's self-released debut album, The Best Party Ever is available in the US as a pricey import from Amazon or for a much more reasonable cost from Insound.
Shadows tag: theboyleastlikelyto.
Posted by Little Miss Rock'n'Roll at 01.22.06 at 4:06 AM
Comments
The links to your tracks aren't working, at least not for me.
Posted by: The J Train at 01.22.06 at 11:35 AM
I've fixed them -- sorry about that! That's what I get for posting late at night after going to a bunch of parties!
Posted by: litte missrock'n'roll at 01.22.06 at 11:46 AM
What about the late '90s twee pop band Wolfie?
Posted by: none at 01.22.06 at 2:48 PM
Oh, wow. Wolfie! I haven't thought about them in ages.
Thanks for the reminder.
Posted by: Queen of the Front Row at 01.22.06 at 7:26 PM
Wolfie? Wow, the only thing I know about them is that they slept on the floor of my apartment in Lexington one New Year's Eve, I think 1998. I wasn't nearly the indie nerd then that I am now, and I only talked to them for a few minutes (my roommates were putting them up); I had no idea people knew who they were. (It wasn't unusual for a random band to end up on our couches back then.)
Posted by: The J Train at 01.23.06 at 2:02 PM
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