Coastal Cities - New Waves

If twitchy, nervy guitars and yelping vocals out of the school of 80’s post-punk / new wave jibber jabber are your thing then you’ll love Coastal Cities.

We’ve already featured this band briefly in a blog post concerning The Record of the Day Awards, but now we’re expanding this coverage. Coastal Cities are a five-piece out of High Wycombe (a town not known for its musical heritage except possibly for the delivery of synth pop wizard Howard Jones to the public’s ears 25 years ago) and have already created some small scale buzz online. US boutique label / blog Neon Gold have called them ‘the UK’s next bright young things’ and posted their key track Think Tank, as an exclusive. We’re not sure about how exclusive a song is that’s been up on Soundcloud for 8 months and had already been posted by another U.S blogger a week before - but let’s not get pedantic about these things – nobody actually cares about who posted a track on a blog first except for a few competitive bloggers themselves looking for bragging rights or validation from their peer group.

So why the buzz? Certainly part of it is because the bands snappy, agitated songs have a similar appeal to the likes of Two Door Cinema Club, Foals, The Drums and early Bloc Party. Then when you listen to No Room For Heroes amongst the smooth simple synths and picky guitar work you can hear the occasional boy-shout that isn’t that dissimilar to Los Campesinos! We mention The Drums in that list of references, and this is highly relevant as it seems that The Drums themselves are fans of Coastal Cities, having tweeted their enthusiasm for this new group from across the pond.

It’s not just the bands frank indie sound that grabs the attention though. It’s also the fact that Coastal Cities display a collective unison that all the best groups possess. Watch the way their heads and bodies bob as one in the video to Think Tank and you’ll see what we mean.

Coastal Cities may not be the most original of bands, but their musical vision is tight and could easily have kids all over the UK pulling awkward shapes on the cider splashed dance floors of indie clubs across the country. The single Think Tank is released on December 5 and the band play a show at London’s Bull and Gate on Nov 28 to celebrate.

Coastal Cities - Relief (Demo)

Coastal Cities - No room for heroes

Coastal Cities "Think Tank" (official video) from Coastal Cities on Vimeo.