Monday 2 August 2010

The Metros



Say hello to The Metros, the almost-rans of indie music circa 2008.

They couldn't really be more South London unless they played all of their gigs from a pie and mash shop. That was the first thing I loved about them. I'm a sucker for a proper South London accent.

To be honest, the now defunct Peckham boys were everything a good band should be. BFFS and drinking buddies since school, they were young, loud, and cheeky, with a lead singer who erred just the right side of egotistical arsehole (see Johnny Borrell for the tipping point) They hung out in an abandoned toilet factory with fellow South Londoners Ratty Rat Rat and hosted OTT parties full of groovy young hoxtonites. Women wanted to do them, men wouldn't have said no either (maybe)

Their star burnt brightest in the summer of 2008 when they had an NME tent Reading appearance and released their cracking Squeeze/Madness/Blockheads esque urchin-ska-punk album 'More Money Less Grief.' Their single Education Part 2 ("Education's over-rated, and I'm the monster that it created") was well recieved by all the right people and, in what was surely the band's wettest, wildest dreams coming to life in vivid technicolour, they even supported their idols, the nutty boys, on their UK tour.

Ok, so they probably weren't half as grimey as they would have liked us to believe (the news that they had been thrown off the Coral's tour for throwing a glass bottle into the crowd and nearly blinding a fan seemed almost too rock and roll cliche to be true) And sure, their music wasn't the most original. After all, there are hundreds of lads with estuary accents thwacking away at guitars. WHATEVS TREVS. Their stella soaked tales of ASBO love got our hearts racing and when it comes to music sometimes that's all you need.

If you needed any further endorsement then how about this? Their album was produced by Baxter 'son of Ian' Dury. And, as Baxter is genetically basically his Dad (what with sharing half his DNA and all) that really means that Ian Dury himself produced the record. And if Ian Dury felt that the record was good enough to produce then you're hardly going to argue are you? Good.

R.I.P The Metros.