Mention a two-piece outfit toting guitar and drums and immediately the White Stripes comparisons begin. But while American duo Kid Dakota showed how ridiculously narrow-minded such lazy ideas were when your reviewer caught them playing a cauterising set on tour with Low earlier this year, Mancunian pair FORMER BULLIES again make the inevitable seem ridiculous with this limited edition debut single.
Lead track "The World Ended" is basic and wilfully lo-fi, but there's definitely something mournfully attractive about it, and the way it lurches forward recalls the offbeat world-weariness of the Television Personalities and (at least spiritually) feted US underground heroes like Beat Happening. Besides, it's hard to knock the lovely, disarming way Nick Ainsworth sings "Oh my life fell into place, when I first saw your face." It's the very essence of plaintive.
Both the two additional tracks hint at wayward genius too. "Chorley Cemetery" is ridiculously lo-fi and sounds like it was recorded in a bus shelter for a champion conker and a bag of sherbet dabs and culminates in a ghoulishly exuberant chorus of "This is the place you wanna go to...DIE!!" Charming. Actually, it makes Peter Doherty's smack-addled demos sound positively Spectorian, but regardless of that I still like it.
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Closing track "I Don't Know What You Want Me To Do" changes tack once again, with Tom Settle's drums dropping out, and Nick's downbeat guitar and a double-tracked vocal carrying the melody. It suggests Former Bullies may actually be in possession of a winningly soppy side, so my advice would be to let it out, lads. You can't suppress it for ever, you know.
Former Bullies, then, sound like they've renounced their menacing schoolyard presence for the sake of art and it's a good decision. Sure it's all a little scabby and bloody at present, but the spirit and urge are there. Absolutely.
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