News

The Boy Least Likely To Announce December Tour

• 27th Oct 2010

The Boy Least Likely To are Peter Hobbs and Jof Owen. Peter writes all the music and plays all the instruments on the records. Jof writes all the words and sings. Sometimes they play live, and when they do they have four or five musicians accompanying them onstage.

They met when they were still at school and grew up together in the middle of the English countryside in the small Buckinghamshire village of Wendover. They spent their teenage years scouring countryside car boot sales for rare Dexys seven inches and Lee Hazelwood albums. reading Carson Mccullers, Anne Sexton and Smash Hits magazines. Watching John Hughes films and old videos of Top of the Pops.

All the time putting together a collection of weird and wonderful instruments found in second hand shops, craft fairs and the Early Learning Centre. They started their own record label called Too Young To Die to put out their records and released three seven inch singles before releasing their debut album, which was called The Best Party Ever. It was recorded in the heart of the English countryside on a dusty old eight track machine with seminal producer Bobby Charm. The album quickly garnered a strong underground following, and became a favourite with music critics and bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic. At the end of 2005, it was included in Pitchfork’s top fifty albums of the year and in the Rough Trade Shop’s top ten albums of the year.

In 2006 they signed a deal with Simon Fuller’s 19 Recordings label and released another three singles that had already been released before and spent the rest of that year and the year after touring the UK and the USA with James Blunt and Razorlight, as well as headlining their own dates around the world.

Strongly influenced by the independent bands of the 1980s, the songs bring to mind the post punk playfulness of Altered Images, Aztec Camera, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Orange Juice. Theirs is a charming rural pop sound with banjos, glockenspiels, recorders and fiddles thumping away in a quirky indie folk style. The music is heartfelt and uplifting with unique and sweetly eccentric lyrics. They make disco music with a country heart. Sublime pop moments tinged with an English folk eccentricity. These are sad songs that can't help but make you smile.

In March 2009, after two years of legal wranglings, they finally broke with 19 Recordings, and released their second album, The Law Of The Playground on their own Too Young To Die Label. It included the singles ‘A Balloon On A Broken String’, ‘Every Goliath Has Its David’, ‘When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade’ and ‘A Fairytale Ending’.

And now in 2010, they bring us The Christmas Special, their “difficult” third album. Some things were just meant to go together. And so it is with The Boy Least Likely To and Christmas. They go so perfectly together, it is as if the Christmas album was a concept thought up especially for them. After all, no other band manages to sound quite so excitable and quite so sad at the same time. Like Christmas itself, the band’s songs are brimming with joy and happiness, at the same time as being undercut with a melancholy and a feeling of sadness, a longing for something absent or lost in adulthood. So while they were writing songs for their next album they took a break to spend the Summer writing and recording this collection of holiday hits. It might just be the best Christmas party ever.

The Christmas Special is released on 29th November 2010 through Too Young To Die. They tour the UK in December in support of it.

December
Tuesday 7th Nottingham, Bodega Social 0871 3100 000
Wednesday 8th Glasgow, King Tuts 0844 499 9990
Thursday 9th Manchester, Ruby Lounge 0161 832 1111*
Saturday 11th Winchester, Railway Inn 0196 286 7795
Tuesday 14th London, Hoxton Bar & Kitchen

*Tickets are £7.50 and are onsale now at link / 0844 811 0051

“The only true twee pop heirs to Belle and Sebastian.” – Spin Magazine

“The Best Party Ever is a thing of wonder, made out of rubber and springs – heartache with a sense of humor. Like the best children's authors, The Boy Least Likely To understand that kids feel as much hurt and sadness as grown-ups do.” Pitchfork

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