Singles

Cheatahs - Warrior / Minotaur

Nick Lewis 24/07/2009

Rating: 4/5

It's not generally wise to expect much from a man recording songs by himself with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a copy of Garageband. However, I think in future I will be more open-minded. Nathan Hewitt of Little Death makes quite a lovely noise that chiefly seems to involve recording simple acoustic guitar parts, drowning them in digital distortion and half-singing a bit like Willy Mason on top of it. If it sounds like something that would appear on the end credits of a mumblecore film set in New York, you'd be very right. If, like me, you quite like mumblecore films set in New York, then you'll like this.

At first, it might sound a little pretentious, a little too arty, a little contrived, a little too much like something the cool people are into to prove how cool they are. But if you give it another listen you'll realise that the songs are actually quite lovely, and there's something oddly compelling about a digitally distorted acoustic guitar. The chorus in Warrior is almost Snow Patrol-esque in its power-chords-on-every-eighth simplicity; but much, much more intriguing in this stripped down and lo-fi setting. In fact, if you crossed Snow Patrol with The Velvet Underground, then took away most of their instruments and made them record on a laptop at home, you wouldn't be far off.

Cheatahs Myspace