Demos

Daddy Long Legs - Chivalry Gets Results

Tim Miller 09/11/2005

Rating: 4/5

Calling a song 'Spiders' is all very well and good, as System of a Down did once, but naming your band - the collective heart and soul and moniker which fronts everything you do and stand for in music - the not so distant cousin of everyone's favourite hated eight legged creature might be a stretch too far? “Daddy Long Legs? I'm not buying THAT record, I hate those things!”

Ok, so anyone who has a passion for music isn't really going to be that fickle, which, for DLL, is just as well. This demo promises much and delivers short quantities of high-quality relaxed indie. The first song, Making a List, starts with a fraction of a guitar segment which sounds just like the intro to Frances the Mute, and then becomes a mellow jaunt through acoustic major seventh chords. Before, bizarrely, it changes completely into a different punchy, upbeat song about losing items, the singer conceding 'I probably need to do some laundry”. A good start, nevertheless, to the demo. Soup, by far the best track here, begins as though being played through an old radio. When the song begins properly, a warm, clean guitar sound akin to optimistic one hit wonders Dodgy emerges. With funky blues guitar licks, sun-drenched harmonies and an ear for a sweet spot chord change, Soup is the gorgeous high point of the demo.

Using a drum kit comprised of what sounds like kitchen utensils, Girlhead is the next song, nice enough with similar summery harmonies but rather harmless and forgettable. Even a more distorted second half of the song doesn't quite bring it up to the preceding standard, with a conspicuous lack of direction as it ends. But fears of the demo petering out with a whimper are banished with final song, titled Nasty Goreng (answers on a postcard, please). Thinking Weezer, which is a good thing here, DLL go up-beat again on this track, and its chorus manages to encompass everything good about Daddy Long Legs - the pleasant harmonies and the tender chord changes all finished off with a less offensive, more mellow guitar sound than Rivers would use. The only thing missing from Nasty Goreng is a return to that brilliant chorus before the song finishes.

For a demo, Daddy Long Legs have really paid attention into making the most of what they have to offer. It's tempting, such is the niceness of listening to their demo, to term the music 'easy listening', but that would do it an injustice and bring unfavorable comparisons. It's much better than that, and with a knowing wink, Chivalry Gets Results may not turn out to be so much as just an EP title but more of a premonition for Daddy Long Legs.

http://www.myspace.com/daddylonglegsuk