Dance To The Radio - 4 x 12” Vol. 4

And finally we reach ‘Volume 4’ of Dance To The Radio’s EP series. Unfortunately it’s not quite the best one yet and when we compare it to side one of ‘Volume 3’ it pales. Nonetheless, the four songs here contain more brilliance and more innovation than anything that currently sits in the UK charts or that is appearing on any of the mainstream magazines tip lists.

To begin with we have Drink Up Buttercup and their song ‘Even Think’. It’s like Arcade Fire running an unhinged fairground ride and takes you on a demented journey leaving you on shaky legs afterwards. Spectacular it isn’t and low budget it almost certainly is. Yet at the same time there’s something darkly compelling about it, making you want to return to the fairground with some mates, just to prove that it actually happened.

The complete flip side to Drink Up Buttercup comes, funnily enough, on the same side of vinyl. Milk White White Teeth make summery British pop. Like Field Music being highjacked by a brass band. ‘The Calender Will Crawl’ sounds like it belongs played from a pavilion on the green of an English East Coast town. It oddly recalls the seaside and we think that your grandma might like it, but that just adds to its charm in this case.

On the last side of the series there’s tracks from Super Extra Bonus Party and Paul Thomas Saunders. On first hearing the first of these; ‘Who Are You And What Do You Want?’ (featuring R.S.A.G.) we noted down that it was “exactly the sort of pop song that we want to hear right now” and we stand by that comment. It’s decidedly modern in and by having the vocals low in the mix deflects any accusations of electro-pop bandwagon jumping. It’s unlikely to be enjoyed by Joe Public and might sound rubbish in six months time, but for now it’s really rather enjoyable. Finally, there’s the aforementioned Mr Saunders, although hailing from Leeds, sounds like he’s lived his life at sea, such is the woozy drunkenness of his acoustic indie. He’s inviting comparisons to Cohen and Drake but such a comment does him disservice as he has a sound of his own that he sounds very comfortable in.

As a final note; this EP series when put into a playlist, or listened to continuously, makes for an excellent full length compilation. If Dance To The Radio still have copies left of all 4 12”s then you could do very much worse than having all of them in your collection.