Photograph by Samantha Knight
You can BUY the "Voices All Clear Now" ep now on iTunes
Perfect Pop: The Biography Of Barry’s Attic.
by Damien Hyde
“..Panic on the streets Birmingham...
Hang the wretched DJ because
the music that they constantly play,
says nothing to me about my life”
Immortal words form the godfather of Indie. A display of his anger and frustration directed towards the shallowness and supreme monotony of the dance music fad that began to seep in during the late 80’s.
This is a remonstration that continues to be echoed today. Young men and women in towns all over the country mutter quietly to themselves in their poster ridden bedrooms, putting up with the industry and the music scenes, only to have to mould their tastes around the current musical zeitgeist.
Our generation and the next have been struggling to find meaning and a point to this pop/indie scene for a while, failing tragically to fit these tunes into any aspect of our lives for over a decade now. No one will be quoting Luke Kook in 20 years time with lines like “ I know she knows I’m not fond of asking”.
But wait! There is hope yet.
Barry’s Attic are the band that may very well save your youth.
If you go to see them, in a small sweaty venue on a starry night, I guarantee you’ll discover something to believe in. This is a band armed with songs that enter your ears, find their way through the various ventricles and arteries, down your aorta and right into your heart. Songs that say something to us about our lives. Songs that encourage sticky dancehall choruses to stir. Songs to dance to and songs to think to. These are the songs that you will create memories with.
The riffs are vicious and the melodies are vibrant. This is pop that illuminates those low-lit indie nights. This is pop for all. Pop to unite. Pop to discuss. Pop to distract. Pop to live for. Barry’s Attic are your new favourite band.
This post-modern pop outfit are everything you’ll never need in band. This is the band you’ll reference to your kids as providing the soundtrack to your youth.
Coming from the sleepy suburban town of Kingswinford in the West Midlands, the band is made up of Adam Lee (Vocals, Guitar) Steph Lee (Keyboards, Vocals) Stuart Jones (drums) and Nathan Warrilow (Bass). Working menial jobs to finance their ambitions, the band have been together in one form or another for three years. Gigging endlessly around the midlands, they are currently looking at setting up a nationwide tour and have recently completed the recording of their third and definitive EP entitled ‘Voices All Clear Now’.
The motivation behind the band is simple: To make the perfect pop record. One that will resonate through the ages and be remembered for decades to come. They realise the post modernity that blemishes the current creative arts. They know, with the danger of sounding unoriginal, that Originality is dead. Adam explains it like this. “We know what we love, but we want to make up our own sounds from that: to add to everything that's out there already. We’ve no fixed genre. I see music as shapes. We just want to construct them in way that has not been heard before”. This I assure you is achieved in every element of their records.
Adam’s distinctive vocals lend a vulnerability and an honesty to the music that is lacking so much in others.
The lyrical content is also immense. Dry, observational and with more pith than a truck load of oranges. An example of this is a line form their unmissable EP track ‘The Past Is Just That’; “I’m tired of dodging ashtrays/Don’t you know smoking kills”.
They are also capable of thought provoking introspective gems too, such as this line taken from their anthemic song ‘Eleanora’; “we all waste our time/ on 'I Love you’s’/and this is how you're gonna save my life?” A line with the ambiguous quality evident in all great pop songs.
Barry’s Attic have a certain clarity that is lacking from so many current bands. They have no agenda to speak of. On Mondays they go to work. Then, occasionally they perform. Say thank you and have a beer. Just normal folk making exceptional music. There is no small time rock & roll pretence, no belligerence, no theft of the rider. Just humble, modest and well meaning music.
We are a generation of media overloaded, wired, doped and fucked young people. So where are our mish-mash masterpieces?
The answer: They are right here. They have the songs. They hold the voice.
This is Barry’s Attic.
Take Notice.
words by Damien Hyde