A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a Facebook message about a band called ‘Hockey’. I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever mate, what do you know about music? Why don’t you go and listen to some Andy C you drum-and-bass-listening moron?’, but I checked them out anyway as I was at work and, frankly, what else was there to do? So, with the nothing more than the faint hope of mild diversion in mind, I moseyed electronically over to Hockey’s MySpace page to see what they had to offer. Little did I know, a veritable musical banquet awaited me. Not the kind of historically inaccurate and insubstantial food-based banquet that Heston Blumenthal creates on Channel 4, but a music-based one with guitars and drums and stuff.
Hockey are absolutely brilliant. OK, so I’ve only listened to the five songs on their MySpace page, but they’re all brilliant, so I assume everything else will be. Those five songs create some sort of electro-funk-rock-rap-dance fusion that my simple, musically uneducated brain cannot adequately describe. One minute they’re crooning over some slap bass, the next they’re shouting over rock guitar riffs, then, just when you think you’ve worked them out, they throw in some 80s style keyboard synth stuff. I don’t what it is, but I like it! With a singer that’s whiny enough to sound interesting, but not whiny enough to be annoying, and lyrics that are either obscurely insightful or slightly nonsensical (I am as yet undecided) they are a joy to listen to. I’ve listened to those five songs repeatedly since, and still haven’t got bored of them. My personal favourite is the 80s throwback feel-good anthem ‘Song Away’, complete with rhythmic clapping in time to the infectious beat.
Unfortunately, for the time-being at least, the only place to listen to Hockey is on MySpace. My attempts to download their album ‘Mind Chaos’, through legal and illegal, avenues has so far ended in vain – and the only mail-order distributor claims to have sold out. I thought, perhaps, that Hockey were destined to be one of the many undiscovered and unpolished gems lost in the wilderness of MySpace, listened to only by unproductive office workers.
Apparently not! Only a few days ago I was walking around Sheffield, its relentlessly grey skies looming overhead, when a grimly inevitable downpour forced me into the local Topshop to escape the rain. My quest to find a hat that would keep the rain off without being three times too long for my head, like some sort of incomplete balaclava, proved fruitless. However, as walked in I was greeted by the, not inappropriate, sound of Hockey’s ‘Too Fake’ being pumped through the in-store sound system. I assume that means that they will soon be as popular as the poorly made t-shirts and skinny jeans that fly off Topshop’s shelves like warmed through cakes. I hope this is the case.
Indeed, rumour has it, they are releasing ‘Mind Chaos’ properly in the near future. I have no doubt they will be a huge success. If they aren’t, I’ll delete this article deny I ever wrote it.
