Baby Pink :: "Cellar Door"

Critics can't decide whether to bet on the return of emo or the return of 1990s alternative rock. Baby Pink cast their creative lot with the latter on best-song-to-date, the reverb-pedal-heavy, "Cellar Door" throwing itself back to the British invasion of Oasis and Blur. Even their press photographs scream 1995. But will Baby Pink be TRIBES or the Vaccines, will they be Oasis or Spacehog? The final movement of "Cellar Door", the two most pleasing words paired in English, bodes well, the band rolling over the lyrics, "Just shake little baby, just shake for me" until it becomes marching orders, maybe even the sound of an old thing that could well be the next one.

On The List :: We Barbarians and Tribes @ Mercury Lounge [12.8.11]

We Barbarians are the best band playing in New York City right now. The crowd at the Mercury Lounge on Thursday, an odd assembly of label heavy-hitters and interns from Island and Universal Records (a function of UK headliner Tribes), didn't at first embrace this reality and then couldn't help avoiding it. A&Rs in their leather jackets, ill-fitting jeans and awkwardly young choice of shoes began to tap their feet. The room filled around the sound that We Barbarians projected from the stage. They joked, as the seven-o'clock band, that they were glad the audience left so much room in the front, that awkward horseshoe that performers hate and crowds can't seem to help, because their bigger crowd was coming later. In a sense, they were correct. This is a band that has something much, much larger on the horizon, and perhaps if we have left some room, it is only for the moment. They played their entire Headspace EP and two other songs and like that, they were gone.

Tribes, a hotly-buzzed outfit from London took the stage next and it was immediately clear where the English press derived their fervor. In much the way that Silversun Pickups stuck their increment borer in the tree of American Alternative Rock, Tribes have done a similar thing with Alternative Britpop of the 1990s. The extraction reveals the tree's rings, the passage of time and how fresh and familiar the dulcet tones of 1996 can sound in 2011. For their first New York show, the band played their single, "Sappho" third, a song destined to survive and thrive on British radio and potentially jump the ocean. A pristine brunette in the front row, and more importantly someone who did not work for the band's label, knew all the words and moved herself to the center. For the purposes of monetizing, this is never a bad thing. Tribes closed the night with their second best song, "We Were Children", a song sporting the type of chorus the will quite rightly make famous, first sung lightly and then wailed at full volume. "These things happen", the band serenade us, "we were children in the mid-90s." And this, broadly defined, was true.

Listen :: Tribes - "We Were Children"
Listen :: We Barbarians - "The Wait Is Over" (Delta Spirit Remix)

Tribes :: "We Were Children"

Last January the Vaccines stood on the stage of the Bowery Ballroom and played B-side "We're Happening". The chorus screamed the eponymous lyric. It was deathly appropriate for a British band about to storm the wallets and music libraries of US music consumers, especially because they knew something we did not: They had one of the best rock records of 2011. Next in line for this dramatic irony is Tribes, a London four-piece so steeped in Britpop it will make you dig up some old Suede record you haven't listened to since 1994. Though Tribes is considerably rougher than the aforementioned or Manic Street Preachers, bands that so defined the rise of the genre but weren't Oasis. On "We Were Children", arguably the band's thesis statement, Tribes chants, "Oh no, stranger, you're just like me/these things happen/we were children in the mid-90s." Now, loosely interpreted, this could apply to just about everyone you are friends with, one of those broad swaths of nostalgia that make you think about singing "Champagne Supernova", your first cheap beer and riding around in the backs of cars. It is instantly memorable, a series of modulated pitches that seep in with the the immediacy of a spilled drink in a shag carpet. You're almost helpless in the face of it. Or, put another way, this is happening.

Listen :: Tribes - "We Were Children"

The band plays Mercury Lounge and Glasslands (both with the stunning We Barbarians) next Thursday and Friday, December 8 and 9. Their debut record will be out in January.