About Me
Here's the record company blurb... rock on!
"Just as recent pop culture has been about recycling male rock stereotypes of speed & power, these groups celebrate the opposite: self-doubt, rejection, desperation. The name says it all: Thee Unstrung." NME 7th August ‘04."
With an average age of 19, Thee Unstrung are a working class 4 piece rock’n’roll band with attitude, swagger and songs to match, based around the song writing talents of the two front men.
They are set to release their new single “Psycho†- full of the caustic speed driven attitude that made the ‘Hamburg’ era Beatles so memorable - and the follow up to last years ‘Contrary Mary’ debut – on 18th April 2005.
Work on the album has already begun with Phil Brown engineering whose credits include Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones alongside legendary British songwriter Chris Difford from Squeeze in the producer’s chair.
“All our songs are about growing up in London there’s a free spirit [and] I’m quite up for that spirit, it’s all about freedom of speech & liberty. Everyone helps each other so there’s no rivalry. Everyone’s trying to pull each other up to the same position" Ben Bailey, Thee Unstrung quoted in NME 7th August ‘04.
The new rock revolution is in full swing: Spewing out of London’s Paradise Bar, Rhythm Factory, the streets of Whitechapel & Bethnal Green, Thee Unstrung are taking the spirit out on to Britain’s motorways and venues. Waiting to meet them, boys & girls tired of rock’s dinosaurs, fired up instead by a burgeoning DIY spirit and a will to make themselves heard.
You could well imagine this lot driving around in British racing green Mini Coopers around a dole office sporting offensive gestures to unsuspecting Civil Servants! An atmosphere of Micheal Caine wearing a pork pie hat and a Carl Barat doppleganger, Thee Unstrung brought us chirpy rock and roll with white trainers on! A london based quartet signed to Poptones are a fusion of old, not so old and new! Three bands sprung to mind, The Undertones, Oasis and The Libertines. The order of the night being thrashy pop with 60's melodies. On occasion Thee Unstrung singers have guitar sex which backed up their songs about teenage hardships and questions about which team they bat for, liberating an epidemic of infectious cockney pop-rock!
They played their new single 'Psycho' and their recent single 'Mary Contrary'. Lyrics like, 'Oh what's become of us, I hope you get run over by a double decker bus'. Imagery confirming their Britishness, even their name holds reference to Shakespearian times! With a dip into the 1960's archive of The Kinks, Thee Unstrung provided us with a staple diet of all that is good in pop music the last 40 years.www.moles.co.uk
Next up came Thee Unstrung dressed in comparatively smart shirts and skinny ties. The four of them sweated confidence and with reason. They sound like a Libertines tribute band with the voice of Sid Vicious. Three out of the four sing and with effortless smiles strum their guitars/basses while the fourth consumes himself in banging the beat out of his drum kit.Starting off with Trip Out Of London followed by You, Panthers, Looking For Nancy, Love Is, Who Runs the Show and then invite their frenzied fans up onstage to dance the hell out of Contrary Mary to the cameras and expiring with a hearty Goodnight.www.angryape.com
Thee Unstrung
"Oasis and their Jesus-like powers just wouldn't cut it these days. Way too subtle. And Thee Unstrung have accepted the call."When ‘Rock'n'Roll Star' swaggered, not walked off the needle of the record player, the intent was clear as Liam Gallagher sang: ‘In my mind, my dreams are real ... tonight I am a rock'n'roll star.' – but at the time they were work-a-day bedsit superstars wanting to conquer the world-in-a-day. And hey, they became rock'n'roll stars, or so the story goes, but the anthem for rock'n'roll freedom has been passed directly to Thee Unstrung.‘Cause Thee Unstrung are not one of those so-jaded-seen-it-all-before-so-hip-it-hurts. Thee Unstrung just have sympathy for the hipsters. Why? Because for Thee Unstrung - rock'n'roll burns them. Thee Unstrung burn, burn for your attention, burn for your attitude, burn for their two-fingered Iggy and the Stooges shuffle through the streets of South London.You, see, Thee Unstrung, like any superheros-of-the-moment, know that the pop universe is a con and they are there for anybody who has felt cheated by the shit of irony-filled-heavy-metal-yodels to covering-puppets-of-English-white-soul. They want something radical. They want music to say something about their life.It hasn't happened.So they provided the soundtrack. A from-the-gutter teenage Council Estate Beatles morphing vague narratives about sexual ambiguity and teenage despondency into a soundtrack as visceral as Martin Scorcese directing the blood-ridden technicolour of the mean streets of London.Mary Contrary is a Libertines-beat-dance around sixties melodicism of the It is not 2004. But hey, it's not about peace and love with Thee Unstrung only just raging, bile-filled working class ire singing like pissed-off London street urchins.‘You' is simply more visceral than Oasis at their peak. Why? Because they are too young too even know who Oasis are. But the radio plays - The Small Faces, The Jam and the Kinks and mod-rock-by-way of a bloodstain and a shove-down-the-stairs in some shithole pub up in South London. They don't know what is cool and what is not cool. They just know the albums that they love an the heros that need to be emulated. And if they don't succeed they will destroy the stage and riot in the audience and try again, obviously.‘Love is' is the unkept twisted Beaudalaire song, dirt-underneath-the-nail-bomb of LondonYouthquake of laser-guided guitar rawk coming straight for you. That hits to become simply blissful white noise wrapped up in the Velvet Underground's first album.Thee Unstrung are up from the same underground station as The Libertines. And like the Libertines they want to rock. Yes, rock. Not a glitchy-ironic-kitsch-rock. The new sonic new-jangled starlight shining directly on Thee Unstrung. And with their come and have a go if you are hard enough attitude - Thee Unstrung are now needed and have been called. Why? Oasis and their Jesus-like powers just wouldn't cut it these days. Way too subtle.
