Huddersfield is enjoying a real purple patch at present with any number of young indie bands coming through. What I really love is the diversity, be it the crisp New Wave vibe of The Boxteles, the honest rock of Ables Army, the bouncing power pop of Courtyards or the punk rap of Dead Wax. One day I swear the town is going to have a far greater claim on mainstream music than that bloke who sang with The Darkness.

Recently, I came across yet another new and spiky Huddersfield talent in the form of The Simones who have just released their first single Lying.

Having taken a bit of a scout on social media, I realised there wasn’t much information on this sassy young band and so used the powers vested in me as a music reviewer of international reach (well I write on the world wide web tbh) to gate-crash the lads by instagram message while they were all together at a practice session, to get the suss.

I asked The Simones to introduce themselves: “Ye, so we have Josh Cooper on drums , Nathan Mabey singing , Ned Johnson Guitar and Jack Marsden guitar too”.

The track Lying has a very pleasing cool sassy beat. Starting quietly it builds up into a nice soulful blues influenced banger with some zany 60’s riffs. I almost expect to see Lulu in a bikini. As well as the deliciously haunting broken man vocals, there’s some nicely relaxed guitar work and a good tight beat going on.

The lyrics are about a lad torturing himself, self absorbed while thinking about a relationship. Of course it’s not a unique subject, but who can’t relate to the subject matter and the lyrics fit well. I assume it’s intentional but the production fits with the retro vibe too.

I was curious about how the writing process worked: “The way we normally write a song is one of us have a chord sequence we like and we show it and we just play together and see where it goes and discuss ideas. Lying was our first song we properly wrote and we have many more written and should be coming some time in the coming months”.

I almost get a Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac vibe in Lying, with that determined guitar and bluesy soul in the vocal, so the guys intrigued me with their future direction when I asked them about the artists who inspire them: “Ok so we’re just talking about our influences and we were saying elements of Radiohead influence is and in our upcoming songs bits of Pink Floyd in there. A lot of our music is different genres so it’s hard to come up with one influence”.

Unfortunately I recently missed a couple of chances to catch The Simones live and I have no doubt as they get more gigs under their belt that their sound and quality of their music will just grow and grow. Tonight (30 November 2019) the guys are playing Halifax at Ego Fest at Arden Social Club with Ego States and Tall Order. I will sadly miss this but have an early New Year’s resolution to catch these guys on stage as soon as possible.

Chris R

* Images taken from the bands social media