BAND OF SKULLS

There is something paradoxical about Band of Skulls. First that name. Like Spinal Tap. All leather and soft focus. Pyrotechnics and huge, meandering guitar solos. Or buffoon mullets, all perm and fringe.

Except they’re not.

Then the actual sound of the band. Swagger and dirty Rock and Roll. Chugging bass, fat guitar riffs and attitude. Lip curling, foot stamping southern rock full of feedback and wah wah. Cut off jeans and a click of cowboy boots. To be heard in a Mustang on Route 66. Or in a slow-mo bullet-fest in a Robert Rodriguez film.

Except they’re not.

The sort of music that should be played at a drink and cocaine fuelled party in the seventies. A band born from the sweat of bars and the college tour. The endless road. Cheap presses and hand written fliers stuck under the windscreen wipers of dirty student cars.

Except they’re not.

In reality…

…Band of Skulls are an incredibly tight, confident rock band from Southampton, whose break came from the most modern of music distributors. Chosen by the iTunes team as the free download of the week, ‘I Know What I Am’ was downloaded over 400,000 times. Unsurprisingly. It is a big, dirty record. Somewhere between White Stripes and Led Zeppelin, refreshing and familiar at the same time. Again the paradox.

When I spoke to Russell, lead singer and guitarist, the band were making their way up from Seattle to Vancouver, our phone conversation was cut short by the distance and a dodgy signal, and for me this has only added to their mystique. It seemed right that they faded from view mid-sentence. Mysterious. Enigmatic. Paradoxical. Lost in static somewhere on the American border.

Before he faded I put the iTunes thing to him. It seems ironic a band that are in many ways are from an older era could end up being defined by something that is so very much of this one. Something traditional being launched by something digital. “We don’t want it to end up being the focus,” he said. “But it was a good shot in the arm”

‘Baby darling…’

What this instant success meant was that there was a readymade platform to build the band on very quickly. In marketing terms there was a large demographic who had already expressed an interest in the band. This sort of surety of audience is rare, particularly without a ridiculous marketing budget and heavy Radio 1 and MTV rotation.

So Band of Skulls found themselves in the studio with a two week deadline to finish the album. The resulting “Baby Darling Doll Face Honey” comes from a text message sent to band member Emma, “when am I going to see you in the big bad city, baby, darling, doll face, honey?”, which then snuck into the lyrics for next single ‘Fire’. It demonstrates a sense of humour that isn’t exactly evident in the music.

Recorded digitally, the sound is crisp and modern, yet the music harks back to the golden era of the seventies; deceptively loose and free. A tight piece of music, as a band they seem very comfortable with each other and the bluesy/rock sound of the music is neatly accomplished without being showy. It has an edge to it, almost something discordant, but at the same time has a pop-sensibility, the harmonies between Russell Marsden and Emma Richardson are an effective counterpoint to the beefy guitar riffs. As I said contradictory, but never schizophrenic.

New world heroes

I like the idea of them out there in America, the early pioneers leaving Southampton to the find the Promised Land. There seems something of the pilgrim about them as a band, something about the way they accidentally stormed success that brings to mind the adventurers of the past. “We like it here”, says Russell. “ There’s a bigger scale, more conviction almost and you get a sense of the musical history. I don’t know, you feel like you are following in big footsteps.” And there they go, the paradoxical Band of Skulls.

Words by Jamie Mollart