03.06
fiqih nufi
The height of twee folk's popularity has been and gone, probably to a fair few people's relief - typical boy-girl harmonies, acoustic guitar strums, glockenspiel pings, cutesy lyrics, but too often had little imagination behind them. What can occur when a 'scene' fizzles out, though, is that all the popularity-chasing bands pack up shop and head on to new, now-hip ventures, leaving only those genuine bands from the lesser-popular genre standing.
Curly Hair were never really your typical boring twee folk/folk pop duo, but could have been lumped in with the movement given their male/female harmonies, acoustic guitar, and odd use of glock, (plus the fact that the male vocalist sometimes wore a scout shirt to gigs). The statement that they weren't in it for the popularity can now be said with a little more confidence now, given that plenty of other folk acts have up and chased the surfy/lo-fi thing (Lightspeed Champion's second album, Jay Jay Pistolet in The Vaccines, etc), whereas Brighton's Curly Hair stay true to their name, still plugging away at the music that their love is genuine for.
I don't know that much about Curly Hair. Not even the number of official band members. The photo above suggests five, their MySpace profile picture suggests just the one, when I saw them live it was two, and plenty of other live photos show three. To be perfectly honest, I'd almost forgot of their existence until an email from Toy Soldier Records plopped into my inbox with a new free song, thanks to the recent snow forcing the cancellation of a gig. But I do know that their lo-fi folk-y sounds, the male-female vocals, the occasional high pitched keyboard tones, out-loud metronome, and glock, as well as their pop sensibilities make me very happy.
Download (the lovely) High Fives, Low Fives taken from debut EP (from 2009) Ivy League from The Line Of Best Fit here, or stream and download (the older) Blow The House Down and (the brand new) demo Plentiful Is The Choir below.
Curly Hair - Blow The House Down
Curly Hair - Plentiful Is The Choir (demo)
