Bison are a four-piece indie rock band who take themselves very seriously, because they don't believe there's any room for humour in pop music. They have over 15000 songs on their iPods but mostly just listen to Oasis and Coldplay. They dress like Franz Ferdinand because that's what their stylist tells them to do. On stage they mostly look bored and stare at their guitar strings, while the crowd stands around trying to look cool and secretly hating everything.
Not really.
Bison are in fact a nine- or ten-piece, horns-front, hoof-stomping party beast who specialise in putting big cheesy grins on faces and getting some serious movement out of knees and, for want of a better word, 'booty'. They have a sense of humour and perspective, a love of pop music of all kinds, and minds of their own.
They weigh in at a full tonne with a gymnastic reggae drum and bass combination, a heavy ska brass line up, rock's finest on lead guitar, a light funk touch on keys, folked-up rhythm guitars, the bluest of harps and vocalists who stray errantly between the corners of the known musical universe. An epicurean mix indeed, but a pure distillation from this melting pot yields a unique sound, and, most importantly, fun aplenty.
From the first gig in May of 2004, BISON has galvanised crowds and developed a small but determined following across the North of the country, from Leeds to Manchester, Sheffield to Nottingham, and down south from Bristol to London.
With two albums released and two more in the pipeline, you can enjoy that heavy heavy bovine sound in the comfort of your front room, too.
They have played all over the shop, including in Amsterdam to a crowd half comprised of people who had made the journey from England, and half of Amsterdammers, who, initially sceptical, were bouncing off the ceiling and storming the stage by the end of the show.
Look out for them at festivals and more in 2007. You herd it here first.
