Goldspot – It’s Getting Old (Fontana)

Usually, press releases bang on about the same old useful but dull stuff: who the performers are, who produced it, when it’s out, why it will be 2007’s must have single/album/aardvark etc. Yeah, I’m getting off the whole music thang, but I like to approach the melodic experience in an holistic fashion ie. I ramble. Anyway, when a press release comes along that, though light on info, is heavy on intimacy, a refreshing change occurs: my brain actually wakes up To summarise, it talks about lead singer Siddhartha’s missing out on eighties pop cultural references, and how he was made to learn lots of Bollywood showstoppers instead, often against his will. It is also, in Goldspot’s case, enlightening and helps to explain why ‘It’s Getting Old’ is just so gosh-darn enticing.

The opening hissy drums and plaintively-sung title cry out eighties revival, and the New Order/Cureish guitar riff only serves to confirm this. In fact, throughout you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a nice indie-pop retrospective like the Killers first album: the chorus pleasantly spreads the vocals thickly over a three-line harmony, the guitar trundles on, octave up, octave down, and the drums continue to hiss. It’s flouncy and moody, but that’s not the whole tamale. There’s something else, the structure seems a tad flamboyant for indie pop. What is it?

The answer lies in the intimate press release: Bollywood influences. What, non-western musical influences that go beyond using non-western instrumentation and actually look at the song structure and complexion? That, my friend, is crazy talk. But that’s what’s going on; the emptiness, loneliness and melancholy comes not from a penchant for eyeliner and baggy cardigans but a passionate dramatic tradition. It’s a bit unusual, a bit subtle, but it definitely works, and without having to resort to Sitars and Tablas either (not that here is anything wrong with Sitars or Tablas, just that their over use by western artists desperately trying to sound exotic is, well, getting old). So that’s it; something old, sounding new. Gold star for Goldspot.