Album Review

Guildean Gang – Dennis Bergkamp

• 5th Feb 2009

This single is as coarse around the edges as you can cope with, but in all true alt-pop style you image that’s just what Bedfordshire lot Guildean Gang are after with this blinder of a debut release.

The slightly oddball, dark pop vocal has a White Lies atmosphere and the overall epicness of the tune relates very indistinctly to Glasvegas, but in truth this isn’t something that the NME teenybopper crowd are really going to get. The reference points are too obscure, vague even, from Gang of Four and Sonic Youth to ‘The Top’ era Cure, the influences are as marvelously hijacked as they are inventively persuaded into this very modern sounding rock track. There’s no waving towards 80’s hair-dos or Korgs, no messing around with nostalgia – whatever such magic it hints at is purely natural – and no trying to be fashionable. This is simple, nihilistic pop. About time too.