The Last Men. Indie/electro/experimental act based just north of london:
"The Last Men
LESS than 12 months after forming, Stortford electro-indie gang The Last Men have capitalised on some spellbinding gigs with the release of their debut EP.
The Last Men
The eponymous four-track effort, which is out now on iTunes, is a thoroughly polished vehicle for their songwriting and sets one heck of a benchmark for new unsigned acts to meet.
With its lumbering, insistent guitar groove and rousing singalong chorus, opener Fuzzy Cuzz wouldn’t sound out of place as a summer hit on alternative radio, while vocalists Alex Bayly and Bella Chipperfield duet sublimely on the more atmospheric, laid-back Hold You There.
Since forming late last year, the quintet have made a sizeable dent on Stortford’s live scene and in the capital. On top of packed gigs at Club Blub and this year’s Stortford Music Festival, they’ve played The Monarch, Nambucca and the Camden Crawl festival.
They’re playing at Cazfest this Sunday (July 3) and are even booked in for a second BBC Introducing… live radio slot following an impressive first outing.
To find out more, see www.thelastmen.co.uk – and visit our Observer Sessions music channel for video from their Stortford Music Festival set."
HERTS ESSEX OBSERVER
"Music, just like life itself, evolves. Moving freely from genre to genre, form to form. In the early years of this decade if you weren’t wearing skinny jeans and a low-cut vest top, hanging round Camden nightclubs, smoking roll-up cigarettes you weren’t a cool band. Countless bands sounding like The Strokes and The Libertines started to emerge and soon took over the whole music scene. But like I said, evolution soon kicked in. From the roll-up cigarette smoke a new type of indie music started to surface, it was more dance-able and had strange beautiful noises, oooh!
I logged on to the online unsigned-music streaming sensation that is Myspace (and a little bit of Facebook) to hear a band from down Essex/Herts way. Misleadingly called The Last Men, this 4 piece Indie electro band comprise of four last men and one last woman and, from what I’ve heard, are making fantastic music!
So what have this new, cool band got to do with that old-timer rant you had at the beginning of the article? I hear you shout. Well, their music is a new twist on that danceable-indie loveliness we’re used to from bands such as Bloc Party and MGMT which is the way indie music started to go. I only got to hear two tracks up on their profile, the track Napalm dream offered everything in the way of effect-filled guitar and fast rhythm that gets your head bobbing and although it was well written and well produced it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. But before I discarded them as another band joining the dance-indie movement a few years too late, I listened to their other track they have available The Cycle, which really made me sit up and listen. Following this up with a video on their Youtube page of a live performance of the song New Life I started to see The Last Men as very accomplished songwriters and musicians with an interesting sound that I’m starting to love.
The Last Men could be Fantastic! I wanna hear some more!
I can see they are really interested in writing good music. I can see obvious influences, bands such as Bloc Party, maybe a hint of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs but also influence from legendary songwriters such as Bruce Springsteen. Their songs have this delightful way of drawing you in before erupting into an explosion of sound. They’re a promising band with brilliant song-writing skill. A quality that has also been noticed by Absolute radio and BBC introducing radio – just a couple of places The Last Men can boast about having their music played.
They’re doing everything right for the current music environment, they’ve found a new interesting sound and manage to perform it better than most bands I’ve heard of this nature. They’re promoting themselves well, with professional photoshoots and online presence. With the opportunity of playing on larger stages with some bigger names I think The Last Men could be Fantastic! I wanna hear some more!"
NEW BEATS MEDIA