There's a riot goin' on

You might want to question the BBC's unflinching inability to question the official line being pushed out of Egypt at the moment, and not think for a second that Mubarak's goons in the army might just be the plain clothed "supporters" who are killing hundreds of protestors in Cairo right now as I type this. I couldn't possibly comment.

But whilst the Western governments carefully try and manipulate proceedings in Egypt, there's an altogether more serene riot occuring in Denmark.

Champagne Riot might be a pretty terrible name for a band, but when they write an ep as dreamy as ‘Moonstruck’ you can almost forgive them anything.

What you get here are four drops of synthpop beauty. The title track soars and sweeps and has a chorus doesn’t so much take glide off and erupt vertically.

‘Heart Stab’ takes the title for the song that’s mostly likely to be in your head for the next six weeks, depriving you of sleep and making you want to wail along like, oh - I dunno, a pretentious teenager.

‘Goldrush’ is almost choral. It’s quite something, listening to something this powerful and wondering how it can come from just two people.

Last up is ‘A Friend of a Friend’ - four minutes of delicious melancholy wrapped around a simple keyboard part that doesn’t just tug at your heart, it rips it out and plays football with it.

The music here is massive, yet the lyrics deal with a kind of world-weariness it’s hard to find elsewhere. And I like a bit of that now and again, don’t you?

 

You can order ‘Moonstruck’ from the Matinee Records website now. And, frankly, you’d be a bit daft not to. Whilst you're waiting for it to arrive through the letterbox, the ep is streaming on the Champagne Riot website.