‘The LSB’ – Make Model
Towards the end of last year I had the pleasure of experiencing one of the finest new bands around in Britain at the moment. I was sure I was onto a winner as this kind of shimmering indie pop rarely stays secret for long, and I was getting to ready to be all (semi-seriously) indier-than-thou with my friends and I could say “Yeah, I saw them ages ago.” It’s so rare that gets to happen, which is probably a good thing or else I’d start to think I really was cool in some kind of way. But still, it’s nice to be able to introduce people to great new music. And yet since that night I’ve heard ne’er a peep about Make Model, Barely anyway. Maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places. But something doesn’t quite seem right about it all. They released their first single, ‘The LSB,’ back in July of last year, have been touring for ages and are signed to EMI; but they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. So as I’ve derived so much pleasure from having their songs (one in particular) constantly on rotation in my head for the last few months, I think it’s only fair I devote some time to sharing them with you now. And a perfect way, in fact, to start my blog.
So, details. Make Model are an Indie band with a capital I: all messy hair, charity shop clothes and a youthful nervousness matching their eagerness to please. But all this fades away into some wonderful alternative shining gems of songs carried out through a fantastic triple guitar, triple vocal attack. It’s not hard to see (or hear) why their name is usually bandied around [poor but unintentional pun] in the same sentence as Broken Social Scene. An often whispery vocal style, boy-girl dynamics, and pointed guitars leading into lushness are all the kinds of things you might expect to hear on a frosty night in Toronto. But there’s also something wonderfully Scottish about Make Model that puts them in line with the likes of The Delgados and My Latest Novel, even if their vocal drawl often belies the Glaswegian origin of the band’s voices.
Make Model’s songs have a keen sophistication to them in both music and lyrics, and it probably helps that they all came with a little bit of baggage and experience, having formed from the remnants of various other groups on the Glasgow scene. But to see and hear them play you feel they have a youthful vigour in appearance and a freshness in sound that makes you think they may have only just picked up their instruments. Their perfect pop sensibility directs their wonderful arrangements to create a subtle beauty that causes you to grin from ear to ear without even realising.
That night at the end of last year, I left with haze in my mind and a poster and a free piece of vinyl in my hand. I rushed out on the following weekend to buy their second single ‘The Was,’ which has received many a spin on my stereo as it proclaims Make Model’s own kind of instruction manual (Objectivity earns you points with me…/interactivity breeds pornography). But it was ‘Folk Song,’ the song on that free demo disc, that has most stuck with me thanks to its anthemic melody and words as confusing in their potential interpretations as they are resolute (often the best way, I feel). “A generation has a duty to uphold a set of ethics and a music to protect.” It may represent a conservative viewpoint of a fan who has long lost touch with relevance, or it may be the words of a band more concerned with staying true to what they believe in than worrying about popularity. Or something completely different. Whichever may be the case, Make Model do what all good folk songs do in speaking from the heart, and what all good pop songs do in making you sit up and listen.
Make Model re-released their debut single ‘The LSB’ on 20 March 2008.
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