The Understudies-If Destroyed True

“When I was singing and writing this and workin’ with her, I was visualizing all the people of my age group; I’m singing to them. I’m saying, ‘Here I am now, how are you? How’s your relationship going — did you get through it all? Wasn’t the ’70’s a drag (laughter)? Here we are, let’s try to make the ’80s good, y’know?’ It’s not out of our control. I still believe in love, I still believe in peace, I still believe in positive thinking. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

And suddenly, just like Lennon recording Just Like Starting Over, it's ten years later. The people who found each other on Myspace have grown up. Hair a little thinner, waist a little thicker, we've moved from crumbling flats to crumbling houses with a little garden. Our jobs and commutes grow more stressful. The indiepop songs about librarians are now DIY pop songs about identity politics. We have cats and kids to look after and our heroes have revealed themselves as racists and sex pests.The daily horror show of politics, which grows more ludicrous and utterly hopeless by the minute, has taken over the social media which was once full of book and record recommendations. Our self deprecating bonhomie has become polite panic. Modern life brings us closer to our nearest but further away from each other. These are nervous times.

So what to believe in? Well, love of course. And music. Our desire for new music may dim, but our need for good music does not. And friends, our patient wait for a record dedicated to those too old for The Courteeners and too proud for the Shinnne On festival is finally over.

If Destroyed True, the Understudies second LP is a perfectly times masterpiece. An indiepop Unknown Pleasures that instead of following obvious paths carves it's own way, leaving the listener mapless and optionless but to listen to and try to pursue. It's a proper album this, a record not to chuck on whilst doing the ironing but to sit down and absorb with the attention afforded a subtitled film.

Millennial Generational tension is covered calmly and deftly in Sweet Tea (Dance halls fall into the sea/I feel it coming/make a pot of sweet tea/and watch the city capsize) and Helsinki (Please don't make me take another selfie), the latter coming across like Radiohead's Planet Telex for the forty something, and in the dark and satisfying Grousebeat (It's like Phil Collins writing songs about the homeless/I'm not a rich pop star/just a casual observer).

But where there is darkness there is light. Precious Heart and the almost startlingly intimate New Dress are no messing about straight up love songs, giving lie to the Motown notion that songs about love must be about the rush of new romance or the lows of a relationship coming apart. These songs, cleverly and correctly, offer the view that the calm of the centre of a relationship given time to blossom and bloom is to be to be cherished. You can't write songs like this without living them first.

And it's not only Brian Bryden's songs that have matured into something wonderful. The band (fairly recently and hurriedly assembled on début LP Let Desire Guide Your Hand) seem to have finally, FINALLY, realised how good they are and absolutely reek of verve and confidence. Thom Allott's songs are also a welcome addition and fit in effortlessly. Past Addresses is as calm as the ocean and as troubled as a storm, and if you squint a bit sounds like a Tindersticks song. Slow Train is a beautiful and fitting closer but it's the tensely wired Wolves which really pushes the band to new boundaries, it sounds like Delicatessen and The Veils and I almost guarantee you it's their favourite to play live.

I once predicted this LP (then unrecorded) would be album of the year. I was wrong. It turns out it's an LP of a generation. With melodies to die for and lyrics to tattoo on your arm, it's a masterpiece and proof (if needed) that faith in hope in music is seldom misplaced. If Destroyed True makes the Understudies the most mis-monikered band since Extreme and Eternal. They've lit the torch of quality which others must follow. Clutch this record to your heart. 

://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/

Review-Travelling Companion by The Understudies

Travelling Companion is the first material from The Understudies since 2014's landmark LP Let Desire Guide Your Hand.. I should hold my hand up here and state that I have been an admirer of their work since the very early days of the band (how can you not love a band that has a song called Chip Pan Glam?). Brian Bryden is easily, easily, in my top ten of songwriters. He somehow managed to write songs that are an amalgamation of hints (but never lifts) of everything I love about popular culture. There are suggestions of all my favourite bands in his song writing, suggestions I can never quite lay a hand on. The bands' songs bring of sense of cinéma français and kitchen sink drama, but with no obvious links or sources. So the news of a new single was a very pleasant surprise. But was it worth the wait? Well...

This record is fucking incredible, not incredible for a third division indie band (or as my partner Rachel sagely puts it 'three fans bands from Scotland no-ones ever heard of') but genuinely and inescapably brilliant. Travelling Companion is as elegant and as fragile as a swans neck. Imagine The Tindersticks covering Asleep by The Smiths with lyrics by Norman Collins. A haunting, cinematic, knowingly bookish piano led song that coldly and darkly twinkles like London frost. The piano riff is instant hookworm material, exquisitely warmed through by strings and guitar that echo Marr at his most poignant and retentive in detail. This is the work of writers who have honed and French polished their craft to a very, very fine buff. The flip side (well, not really a flip side as it's a download, it remains nothing short of a travesty it's not a 45. Something this beautiful deserves vinyl permanence) Everybody's Got To Go is a postcard from the gallows. Slightly less pretty than the A-side but with much more of a hook. It even throws in a T Rex reference at the end. I repeat, how can you not love this band?

If Clint from Pop Will Eat Itself and Alex Turner can make money from writing scores, it's a sad, pitiful world the doesn't see The Understudies writing the soundtrack to your favourite movies for the next ten years. If the rest of the material on the upcoming LP is half as strong as this showing, we have an absolute shoe-in for album of the year. I'm genuinely excited.

The single, Travelling Companion is available for download now from https://theunderstudiesuk.bandcamp.com/. The band will play a set of new songs at Saint Pancras Old Church, London, on February 19th http://www.wegottickets.com/event/420960

Poetry, Bus stops and underpants-Brian Bryden and the Understudies

 Brian Bryden, guitarist, songwriter and singer of the Understudies is happy man. "The  Union Chapel show was pretty amazing, John Jervis of WIAWYA records invited us along and we had the opportunity to play with the little orchestra as they're also doing strings for the forthcoming album. They were brilliant and really made the songs work in what is the biggest and most beautiful venue we've played. We were quite shocked about how many people turned up but managed to hold our nerves. Gold stars to Thom and Ian as it was only their second gig with us."

I love the Understudies. Though they are yet to reach the epic levels of output of the Fall, I have loved every single song they have put out, possibly even more than the author himself "pretty much everything we've put out up until now has been home recordings done in my bedroom which we've never really been happy with."

They have a knack of encapsulating life into a three minute musical Polaroid snapshot with the panache of writers such as Richard Yates, JD Salinger and Miranda July. Songs of nostalgia, sensitivity, and genuine warmth, they manage to keep their feet on the ground with an almost Carry On sense of humour "we don't tend to take ourselves very seriously, it must be exhausting maintaining the level of earnestness and cool that some people strive for. Being quite shy but having the ridiculous urge to get up on stage and sing seems a bit daft but when it's good it can be life affirming."

Like every good pop band, the songs are the key "We do try to approach the songs with as much respect as we can though. Quite a few of my songs have their beginnings in memories and things that have happened but they're usually just a jumping off point and once the songs are beyond the first few lines they kind of take on a life of their own, half fiction half truth. Others have no grain of truth or experience whatsoever and are just inspired by a line or title that pops into my head at 3 in the morning."  

Possibly the strongest work in their current cannon is the Oddbox single 'Everyone Deserves at least one Summer of Love'. Under the watchful eye of designer extraordinaire and band keyboardist/vocalist Bree Wright, the record is a beautifully packaged coloured 7"(even the download code slip is a work of art). The titular A-Side is a self assured, galloping heart stopper that sees its epic verses melt into a toffee-tasty life affirming chorus.  "Surprisingly that one isn't autobiographical at all. I actually pinched the opening lines from the tombstone of some long lost member of the aristocracy whilst wandering around the Victoria and Albert museum, the rest is just my imagination as they say, the title was actually the last thing to come which is a bit arse about face for me. I can tell you though, that I wrote the song in my pants whilst watching the snooker world championships on telly. It's weird but true. I've written some of my best songs whilst watching snooker in my pants, must be the meditative aspect which allows the mind to wander or something."

The flip is the equally assured 'If I come to You'. A gently slow-burning, warm-as-toast arpeggio ballad. It's naked honesty is hard not to fall head over heels for. "with if i come to you... I just wanted to be honest really, not clever or knowing or ironic or whatever. You run the risk of falling flat on your face but I think it's a risk worth taking sometimes."

It's all change for the Understudies at the moment, with a line up change and a new LP on the cards "As luck would have it Ian Cowen was free and we pretty much offered him the job halfway through our first rehearsal. Same applied to Thom Allot Who we recruited after Graeme left to concentrate on his writing. They both clicked from the start which makes it really easy. We're only a few shows in but it's going really well and we've had some really nice feed back. Got plenty of shows lined up so we're quite eager to get back to playing after a quiet 2012."
The swan song of the original line up is the wonderful video for 'Erika K'




Perhaps the the best thing about the Understudies is the fact hey love music and records just as much as you and I do. It's there in the attention to detail and beauty of the record packaging, it's there in the lyrics about French films, bus stops rooted in nostalgia, it's in Brian Bryden's blood. "First and foremost I am a fan. I can't really remember not being interested in music. I was a totp and smash hits obsessive as a kid and pretty much followed on from there and it's been a constant companion all my life. It's a massive cliche but I have no clue what would have filled the void in me if I music hadn't found me. I'd be a completely different person. "

Can he squeeze the vitality, poetry, and day dreaminess of the Understudies in three words? Of course he can-"Buy. The. Album!"

The Understudies

Hailing from London via Scotland (a fair walk to practise one would assume), The Understudies are one of those bands that charm you from the heart outward as soon as you hear them. Its probably down to the mixture of the authenticity of the shy, frail vocals and the raw honesty in the songs-songs of real proper love. Not chocolate box amore but bona fide LOVE songs aching with regret and nostalgia-noire.

'Flick knives' is gorgeously haunting, a Tindersticks go Butcher Boy affair that recalls early Suede. Its hard not to be thawed by the emotion in the almost timidly shy vocals, there are moments of real beauty here. A kitchen sink drama without the kitsch.

'Wanting V Getting' is an angsty twinkling shuffle. With lines like 'The bus stop in which you stole my heart is still standing here today', its a song anyone who's ever had a broken heart can relate too.
Just when you think your poor heart cant stand anymore, Bree comes in like the angel of reason singing ' because wanting is one thing, getting is another' like a cross between Cilla Black and Black Box Recorder. Wonderful.

'If I come to you' is a pleeing, pin striped want-song where both guitar strings and heart strings are played arpeggio. Almost painfully full of emotion, its butt nakedly honest and true.

Live favourite 'Chip pan glam' comes across like The Smiths 'Hand in glove' via a 50's edition of Coronation Street. With nourishment for the heart and for the hips and chock full of killer lines, its money shot is the pay-off line 'We've got a love/like a thousand chip pan fires/still, you sit there and you and ignore us/its been known/to burn whole houses down'. Fabulous.

Not always easy listening, but with a natural warmth and almost super human honesty, The Understudies are truly a band to fall for.

http://www.myspace.com/wearetheunderstudies