Swiss Lips - Carolyn

Streaming and available for free download for your listening pleasure today we have a new song from electro / indie / pop five-piece Swiss Lips. Some things / thoughts about Swiss Lips.

1. They're not really a new band anymore, although a lot of people will have never heard of them and therefore refer to them as a new band. That is, if they get to hear them.

They seem to have been around as a ‘new band’ for quite a while now. We’re wondering if we should stop referring to them as a new band. But when does a new band stop being new? And what do they then become? Swiss Lips are certainly not an old band (hello The Rolling Stones and U2), they’re not even a mid-age band (hello Coldplay), so maybe they’re what Scroobius Pip once described as ‘just a band’.

2. They need to get off the internet and on the radio if they want commercial success. (Assuming that they want commercial success)

If Swiss Lips are at the ‘just a band’ stage then this means that they should be progressing from internet / blog love to stuff like radio, especially as they have an album due next year. And we don’t mean the likes of minority new music radio, but proper Radio 1 type playlisting. This hasn’t happened yet but if it was going to then Carolyn could be the song to do it. Although if all the 'guitars are coming back' type articles are to be believed Swiss Lips could be in trouble because although they do have guitars, they're pretty electronic as well. Personally we don't care if the music is guitar based, synth based or played by two fat Dutch grandmothers banging coconuts on each others wobbly rotund backsides. As long as it's good.

3. There's still sometimes a big divide between blog-pop and real-life commercial pop.

Swiss Lips remind us a lot of Fenech Soler, another all male electronic pop band who never seemed to quite connect with the public with their debut album in the way that quite a few internet / blogger types thought they would. Our conclusion to the above is that just because the blogosphere thinks a band is ‘good pop’ doesn’t mean the wider public thinks it is good pop. Sometimes the two groups are looking through two very different windows. For example in the UK right now Olly Murs is number 1 in the singles chart. He's not as far as we are aware 'blown up on the blogs' or been 'a buzz act.'

4. Olly Murs must have a smug grin on his face.

Mind you, Olly Murs has been on the TV / Radio an awful lot recently. We’d be fascinated to see if Swiss Lips had the same amount of exposure as Olly Murs had if 1. They would have had a number one single. 2. The blogosphere would have liked them as much.

5. This is the bit where we actually say what we think of Carolyn.

Carolyn is actually a very good pop song. Taking a leaf out of Bruce Springsteen's repertoire and singing about cars and girls certainly appeals to most hot blooded men (and quite a few women too). We first heard it live earlier this year at Gathering Festival and it made us feel quite sprightly. It only took one play of the studio version to confirm that Bambi skippy like feeling again. So, basically Swiss Lips' Carolyn makes us feel like a hot blooded baby cartoon deer. 

Download it for free below.

Swiss Lips - Carolyn