League - How Do I Know

Back in February we featured a new duo called League. The back story was something along the lines of an architecture and journalism student who dropped out of college, choosing to live in a tent on the beach and make music, which sounds very romantic but frankly if we were their parents we’d probably be very cross. “Don’t you know that new bands aren’t making any money from music these days you two idiots? Now architecture on the other hand, there’s a fine profession; plans, elevations, dealing with planning officers, contract administration, project management, site supervision, leaving your stamp on the world whilst getting paid a fine salary. Now stop being lazy bums and get back to college.”

Thankfully, we’re not the parents of League, who have been dabbling away and come up with the How Do I Know EP – a three tracker of psychedelic surf pop. It’s the lead track from the EP that has our love the most, with its scabrous ball-grabbing synth line and hazy vocals. It’s the sound of your young before-you parents smoking a load of drugs and dancing naked in the sunshine before they got boring, got mortgages and got you. Responsibility sucks sometimes, we need bands like League to remind us of this fact.

HOW DO I KNOW by League

League - New Waves

League are a London based group consisting of a couple of architecture and journalism degree drop outs who sound like the cousins of the Klaxons without the huge full-on belters, adding keyboards to guitars or guitars to keyboards, depending on your perspective. They are a band who in some quarters would be defined as indie, but this is very much the 2011 version of indie – a blurred vision of a genre that doesn’t actually mean anything anymore. Bands like The Pastels and Half Man Half Biscuit would probably turn in their graves if they heard these songs described as such.

But forget genre definitions and let’s focus on the music. You can hear catchy synth hooks, vocals out of the school of Simon Le Bon, live drums and guitar flicks that create some half decent tunes. League may be a little derivative for some and almost certainly would have fitted in better in 2007 than 2011 but a couple of listens to Golden Maps (no not Golden Skans) with its swirling electronic hooks and mellow drop-downs suggest that if you found Surfing The Void a little disappointing, League may be your decent budget replacement.

Golden Maps by League