News Fear Of Men

What comes first, the music or the moody photography? Just as there seems to be an endless stream of decent acts that you’ve never heard of, they all seem to have the knack of using underexposed sundrenched Polaroid shots or unearthing bizarrely intense SLR shots. Fear of Men are a Brighton group that chose the latter, focusing on close up shots of shrubs and branches to accompany their gaggle of tracks streaming through bandcamp.

Putting the Flora to one side for the moment, the band have a kind of youthful optimism that shines through even into their naive self-tagged genres, opting for ‘fuzz’ and ‘chillwave’ when ‘joyous’, ‘shoegaze’ and ‘pop’ would’ve sufficed. Where Veronica Falls made ground last year, Fear of Men are the ones placed best to profit from their forerunners advances. This is largely wide eyed, bright intelligent music made by people who’ve spent far too much time in boutique coffee shop with decent record collections – The Carpenters flowing into Sonic Youth and back out into Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel, both weird and touching.
What is known about them is this: they consist of two boys and two girls, like an earthy, poor version of Abba; a first show is planned, a kind of wonderful mismatch with the industry and painstaking self-loathing of Former Ghosts taking up the headline slot in early March, with the inevitable slew of local bookers desperately trying to get them to open up their shows following soon after; The slim collection of demos is apparently being bulked up for the occasion by a cover or two, furnishing a couple of classics with their own ghostly charm and splendour.

Any band can (and seemingly does) find faux sentimental snapshots to front their EP or demo, but only a select few can manage this kind of haunted majesty.