Friday 15 January 2010

Northern Portrait - Criminal Art Lovers (Matinee)


To say I was looking forward to this album is rather a big understatement. After managing to see Northern Portrait twice last year, this album seems to have been a long time coming.

This Danish band seem to divide opinion between those who think they're nothing much more than a Smiths tribute band, and those, like me, who are TRUE and RIGHT, who think that they make swoonful, gliding pop music.

And you know that if Morrissey made an album anywhere near as good as this, then people would be wetting their pants. But that's by the by...

Most of the tracks here will be familiar to those who saw the band at their UK shows last year. "Hit" single 'Crazy' is here, as is 'What Happens Next' from their second ep. Songs like 'The Operation Worked but the Patient Died' are already faithfully etched on my brain, and closer 'New Favourite Moment' makes me shiver and think back to Northern Portrait's triumphant Indietracks performance last year.

Now, I'm pretty excited to have this band in my life, but it does make me wonder just how thrilled I'd be to discover Northern Portrait if I was 14 years old. I think it'd be comparable to your first extra curricular fumble with that boy or girl you've had your eye on all the way through double maths, or getting drunk on Skol for the first time. Life-changing, in other words.

Alas, I'm too old to have my life changed too much by music nowadays, but if you can't remember the Soviet Union or the when the Tories were in power, then brace yourself...

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