Missing Andy is a five piece indie rock act from Essex. They are riding high right now, after performing at the famous SXSW festival alongside The Wombats, The Pigeon Detectives and Lightspeed Champion, amongst others. The band has also been asked to be part of a soundtrack for ‘Chain Letter’ a Hollywood film ( featuring Nikki Read of ‘Twilight’ fame.) They are playing this year Redfest on Sunday, July 22 – along with Foreign Beggars.
The driving rhythms and dirty dance beats of Jamaican ska mixed with powerful beat music has always been a tremendous lure for any true London (or Essex) based band. Social historians often overlook the fact that the mod scene was originally concentrated on the all-night dance clubs … it was not all about violence as cool-dressed scooter-boys set about kickin’ ‘the f *** out of rockers on Brighton beach. In the true sense of Mod, Missing Andy are legitimate heroes of the working class. They are workers, thinker and players. Their kind of pop rock is designed to be as tasty and as fresh as possible. They are the legitimate successors of the original mod bands like The Small Faces.
It may have been a twisty, inglorious route to the top table of pop for these mod-class heroes. Getting to the finals of a talent show ( Sky1’s ‘Must Be The Music’) alongside an eleven year old schoolgirl harpist, was an inelegant way to promote their careers, but at least the experience provided the essential skills that the band needed to survive and to grow. Being chucked out of a concert, (after swearing on stage in front of an audience of 8,000 children in a scouting ‘Jamboree’ near Frinton-on-Sea in 2008,) was also awkward, but at least it generated a lot of media attention for the band.
But the boys have now settled into a regular routine of recording, writing and performing … and they are working hard on new material which they have promised their many fans will be a treat for the ears. We were lucky enough to see the band perform in concert at the CLUB NME VS REDFEST gig at KOKO in London.
On stage the band plays chiming jams, rigorously stuffed with generous layers of plush arrangements and an intense party of lively sounds. Their powerful vocals amaze the crowds. Songs such as DAVE (about dirty Suzanna, who has trouble with grammar) is a ska / pop treasure. Those Chas n ‘Dave riffs chug along bravely, while tufts of honky-tonk piano (by Jonathan “Jon” Sharpe on keyboards) clink away merrily in the corner. At KOKO this song was stuffed with Benny Hill style gags, the language was the tongue-in-cheek kind of humour that we all adore… along with the kind of madcap stupidity you might associate with “Madness”. The villains of the peace were cheerful and cheeky in that nudge-nudge naughty English style. The bouncing beat of this superb little ditty had us all moving.
When this band plays, you can not help but think that even Braintree seems exotic… And in songs like “Money” the drums ratatatting ( from Elliot Richards on percussion), sound just like guns firing on the mean streets- perhaps evoking images of a hot night in Spanish Town. Freshly squeezed notes, and a fanfaring upbeat chorus is just the kind of thing you might find in a nightbar alongside a shanty-town in Rio. The masculine voice of lead singer Alex Greaves resonates, but it is highly evolved. Songs like this tend to drill more and more deeply in the skull every time you hear them. Blazing and beautiful.
We were really moved by “The Way We’re Made (Made In England)”, which is the strongest of the band’s many anthems. The text of this hymn invited us to cut the crap and get on with our lives. The lyrics and the beat were fairly predictable – reminding us of “Stan” (Eminem) . But we all smiled at the many clever allusions and concepts scattered along the road. It was a piece of extremely powerful pop, and is still rightly regarded by many fans as the band’s masterpiece.
‘Alive’ is the most Jammy fruit of all of the Missing Andy’s output. Frizzy, fuzzy and fizzy – This is powerpop slammed out without even a pause for air.Venting anger in a song is what this is all about. But those ‘Oh Oh Oh’ choruses and a dancing punk rhythm gives this piece an elegant touch, making the audience just wanna get up and dance some more. This is like a protest song, with pom-poms. Bloody marvellous!
The England that ‘Missing Andy’ creates on stage is a very real England. The images are soggy, disappointing and gray. People are tired and always complaining. The roads are dangerous and dirty. And everything is changing. We feel cheated. We feel insecure. And we feel afraid of the what will come.
But each Missing Andy song has a future in it. And there are always smiles with friends to enjoy. Good times can always be found – even if they are still some way off- beyond the corner. We will not be ground down. The music will keep us healthy and safe. And if we have a little luck, we might even be able to scrape ourselves together a makeshift living along the way …
Missing Andy gave us all a little hope.
© Neil_Mach June 2012
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