The Watermelons

Sometimes I feel things are a little over complicated in music. There's nothing wrong with this. I like to hear a little creative innovation on a regular basis and there's certainly nothing more satisfying than witnessing an act break through certain pre-constructed barriers of impossibility with a mind-boggling blend of forward-thinking, faux-pa crushing flutters and bobbling synth driven splashes. Take 2009 for example. Animal Collective, Amazing Baby, The Horrors, Empire Of The Sun, Passion Pit et al. all pushed blockades and surfaced triumphant.

However. It doesn't always need to be like this. Within the 'indie' world or whatever you want to call it I feel that people sometimes frown upon the simplicity of a guitar based band with fundamentally simple pop songs because it lacks a certain niche or doesn't quite fit into the brackets of some new and undisclosed freshly birthed genre - i don't, bring it on.

The Watermelons may not be your uber trendy East London types driven by a back catalogue of obscure noir post-punk, nor are they your Egyptian Hip Hop types who don charity shop chic attire with little to show for it but a gaggle of image obsessed followers: They are in fact a bunch of youngsters from Chichester who are quite capable to mustering up a delightful collective of effervescent and sprightly racing indie-pop songs that could only be made under the watchful eye young talent yet exude a considerable level of maturity in musical understanding with a clear direction of where they want to get to.

They're also not afraid of listing the obvious influences. Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, Kings Of Leon. And again, this is something that is frowned upon because they're the regular choices, and although some may have hit the commercial mainstream and changed their ethical stance on things (for the worse in most cases) it doesn't shy away from the fact that they have influence thousands of bands - and ulitmately these names keep appearing as influences etc. because they're the fucking best. Everyone will own at least one album by the bands listed above so don't pretend to be above the cultural radar of coolness because it's rather unbecoming.

The Watermelons - Garden Path