17/05/04

RENT / BUFFY 3TRACK EP

Unsigned band Rent is a brilliant guitar driven rock/pop band that have a brilliant angle on pop melody and dynamic songs (songs you remember them don’t you?).

First track Buffy is yes about the vampire slayer and Dan somehow manages to rhyme "I don’t know my yang from yang but please let me be in your Scooby gang". These songs will leave you with a smile but aren’t gimmicky enough to become tiresome as next track is Newsong a dynamic love song with drive so beautifully crafted it is unreal. Finishing the EP is "Parasite" a slow builder which includes lines like "what do you do when you can’t find your own harbor lights". Newsong and Parasite are ageless and a real discovery, don’t let this pass you by.

Arathorn

RENT / 5AM (5 TRACK EP)

5am is one most dazzling of the tracks on this EP within the first minute you know you are hearing something different. Including the immortal lines "the cigarette butt burns into the morning feel the sun rush while your day dreams fall apart". A little bit of what you fancy next kicks in with a riff so happy it is unreal, the song is so cheeky and happy you just can’t help but be swept away unashamedly pop and who gives a #~+ when its well written and fun in the centre it breaks into a disco synth for 10 seconds before seamlessly coming back. Ballad is a song everyone from Simon and Garfunkel to every metal band that ever wrote a ballad must be kicking themselves that they never wrote, starting with a piano, too beautiful for words. "We never talked" is probably my favorite Rent song it starts with a guitar riff that is very much The Cure "boys don’t cry" then kicks in heavier with amazing use of synth in the chorus. Dandy the next song is for fun with some wit but not for me a hidden live track after this a cover song with guest vocalist. Available from their website both for less than a tenner.

Arathorn