First from the pile is Murph, who play pleasant indie pop/rock. Their songs are well-constructed together with drum pauses, echoing vocals and interesting lyrics which break free from clichéd song material, catching a line at random, for instance: “Cheque, cash or credit card, neither this is a robbery”. Not your common or garden pop lyric, but they’re still youthful and enthusiastic enough to include some “ah ah ah ah ah” bits.
So on to the lesser-spotted Swamp Donkey who start off sounding like the Smiths with “Paint a Picture” then fly on to rock and stick on that harsh perch for a while before flying back to softer ground and finishing the song with a gentle, almost feminine, harmony and a big tinkle of tambourine. This is a band with a wide wing span/bizarre mix of influences, the second song sounding like the Levellers in places, becoming quick-paced and spherical. The last song is mad and shouty, verging on reggae.
Then Seafood who are far from fishy but are lo-fi, small and chirrupy, quickly darting around, entertaining. They are very reminiscent of The Delgados with their shouty bits and alternate boy/girl vocals. They talk between songs and experiment with noise and switch from the shouty bits to more gentle love-songness and bopping along...
But Silent Bob bob bob bobs along like a red red robin and quite a quiet one at that. They bob along at a reasonable introspective guitar driven pace but I’m not quite sure what to make of them, like the weirdly lyriced song which appears to be about numbers and football. On the other side of the tape are Patty Star (no not Mazzy) who appear to be Silent Bob plus some other people. The guitar still bobs, in a nice enough sort of way but doesn’t create any big waves on the garden pond or grab my attention till a very scary version of “I’m too sexy etc etc etc” starts playing, still bobbing, but I get scared and fly away onto...
Cody, who have sent us a copy of their Shifty Disco single recorded onto a recycled NME tape. And very accomplished it is too: they’re a whizzy scuzzy spacey keyboardy type of band, with drum machine and la di daa di da, as well as reflective spoken words over musical background, suddenly bursting out into song again. Lo-fi but potential high-fliers - if this demo is anything to go by it will be well worth looking out for them in the skies of Oxford. Are they named after Cody from Neighbours? We shall never know.