Band of the Week: Wonderswan

Posted on Sep 26th 2009 4:46AM by Stephen Dowling
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The screams of glee that have greeted the news Pavement are back, back, back shows just how long a scuzzily-recorded pop song stays in the memory.

Leeds' Wonderswan were probably more interested in the goings on of the Scooby Doo gang than Malkmus and company when Pavement first slanted and enchanted, but in 2009 -- two decades on from the the salad days of lo-fi slacker rock -- the Leeds band are showing early signs of being candidates to pick up that four-track-recorded baton.

The fuzz-laden, murkily-voiced 'Furrrpile' is a slab of melodic scruffiness that Pavement or an early Dinosaur Jr might have made in their prime; all 'Catholic Education'-era Teenage Fanclub melodies buries under groaning, guitars. It's Wonderswan's first single, and the closest way to relive the summer of 1990 without actually owning a TARDIS.

While magazines and websites have been scratching their heads over a "new grunge" movement taking hold in Yorkshire in the last year -- thanks partly to the muscular rock of Dinosaur Pile-Up and Band of Horses -- Wonderswan owe as much to Sonic Youth as they do to any band that called Seattle home in the early 1990s.

The band recently played the Reading and Leeds Festivals on the BBC Introducing Stage, and are taking to the road as support for Sky Larkin through October. Q Magazine also tipped them in the 101 Hottest Things Happening in Music last month. We hope the temperature rises.