☭ marselip0910 叶俊华™

; the band’s debut album ‘Happiness’ precedes it on August 6th.


Theo Hutchcraft (vocals), Adam Anderson (electronics, guitar).


Hurts: not unattractive



There’s been a fair bit of fuss over Hurts recently – their ‘Wonderful Life‘ single appears to have scratched many a moody pop itch – and now a new track ‘Blood, Tears & Gold’ has surfaced. It’s not a single, but it’s got a video (i.e. it probably will be a single if enough people go mental over it.)

Check informationhurts for, er, more information on Hurts.

Once upon a time, it was the law that all indie bands had to be moody and European, arty and pretentious. Then along came Oasis and the Thick Rock Lad took over. Still, thanks to today's new band, we can be reminded of a period when it was OK to namedrop obscure literary texts in interviews and resemble gaunt, starving artistes masquerading as stylish Italian models or actors in pseudo-y French existentialist movies from the 60s. The video to Hurt's debut single, Wonderful Life, is so gloriously sombre and monochrome, it's almost obscene, although frankly, up here, we could weep with joy. The angular haircuts, the savage cheekbones, the darkly lit black-and-white setting, the pained stares into the middle distance ... it reeks of eau d'1983 – the year when half-remembered bands with names like the Lotus Eaters, It's Immaterial and Pale Fountains took the shaved-sideboards-and-suits look of post-punk into the mainstream. The song itself is surgingly sad synth-pop, with a mysterious lyric whose optimistic chorus ("Never give up, it's such a wonderful life") contrasts with the dour verses, filled with references to crying and rain. It's even got a Spandau-style sax solo while the video features a gorgeous Edie Sedgwick-alike who appears to be dancing to a completely different song.

Hurts – and that name is already splitting opinions because it's so self-consciously serious, which is precisely why we love it – come from the home of the grave, Manchester (well, when Joy Division and Factory Records dominated the city like shadowy colossi). Hutchcraft and Anderson used to be in a band called Bureau who later formed part of a pop outfit called Daggers and recorded some tracks with Richard (Kylie) Stannard and machine-pop maestro Richard X. Now they've streamlined the operation down to just the two of them and they're making lushly mournful electronic pop music like Illuminated and Unspoken, tracks that recall the epic synth melodramas of Ultravox circa Vienna, and Wonderful Life, which apart from being way better than the 1987 Black single of the same title, posits Hurts as a boy-duo styled by Helmut Newton, directed by Anton Corbijn and produced by Trevor Horn on a Martin Hannett tip.