Beautiful To Watch / The Illness / Passchendaele / The Curse Of Saul / Alice / Good Life Salesman / Violent Man Lovesong / The Last Day / Walk With me / Leni / Turn It Back / Start/Stop

COLUMBIA RECORDS

With a sound that fits snugly between the whole new rave likes of The Klaxons and Hot Chip and the more traditional indie rock awkwardness of The Wedding Present, GoodBooks are a band making refreshingly noisy sounds with their debut album, CONTROL.

Amidst all the angular guitar jerks and barking vocal yelps, former single THE ILLNESS is an infectiously catchy pop tune, vocalist Max's compelling lyrics pitted against metronomic cowbells and swirling synth squalls.  Centred around a suitably emotionally wracked chorus, GoodBooks strike the middle ground between Franz Ferdinand, Editors and The Klaxons, striking stuff.  An impressive sounding tune, THE ILLNESS continues GoodBooks mission to surprise, entertain and compel with each new release.

PASSCHENDAELE finds the band returning with another confident sounding song;  a catchy pop song attached to a musical backing that revels in the quirky and eclectic.  It's in this sense of the unexpected and unusual that GoodBooks really come into their own; a curious melting pot of processed beats, unexpected synth eruptions and frenetic brass interludes, a band sharing much in common with an outfit like the Super Furry Animals in their originality and fresh thinking.  PASSCHENDAELE is a strong indication that GoodBooks are a band capable of spectacular things; this just the latest instance that manages to surprise, delight and compel.

BEAUTIFUL TO WATCH is another invigorating slice of slightly left of centre indie pop, Goodbooks finding a delicious middle ground between the eccentric and the direct.  With GOOD LIFE SALESMAN, the band continue to evolve and surprise, a twisted tune that owes as much to the dark electronica of Amon Tobin or the Boards Of Canada as it does to the more indie pop centric likes of Franz Ferdinand or Editors.  Elsewhere, Goodbooks twitch, jerk and engage on songs like the infectiouslessly delicious THE LAST DAY, LENI and TURN IT BACK, the band proving themselves an outfit never capable of anything less than the intriguing and inspirational.

All in all, CONTROL throws Goodbooks up as a band full of ideas, invention and intoxicating brilliance; delivering a debut album with enough twists, turns and leftfield injections to keep you captivated for quite some time.

BIOGRAPHY

Melody can be a dangerous thing, according to GoodBooks.

But while catchy tunes may never be cool, once pop music is imaginative, it rarely ceases to inspire and affect any listening ears. When GoodBooks try to convey this formula, they tend to repeat Hot Chip’s rather simple ethos- “we love the idea of ‘pop’ music but not the people who make ‘pop’ music now.”

A neatly surmised philosophy is about the only lead GoodBooks have taken from elsewhere though. Part Orange Juice, part The Cure and part Talking Heads, but as blindingly original as they are deviously infectious. Somewhere between Max’s subtly affecting vocals, Leo and Chris’ vivacious rhythm section and JP’s Johnny-Greenwood-in-a-small-room keyboard collection, a sound that is uniquely GoodBooks emerges.

Born the day four teenage GoodBooks waited to audition a new bassist and ended up writing what would become their debut single, the band have always had an inherent sense of self assuredness. Such conviction may explain an instantly impressive live set that belies their lack of experience on record. That experience nevertheless began last March, when Transgressive Records lovingly put their blistering debut Walk With Me on the shelves.

And although Walk With Me is all about loneliness, GoodBooks are perhaps at their best when regaling tales in the third person. Take Leni, the band’s latest single, a song inspired by a Franz Kafka novel - or live favourite Passchendaele, a fable of father and son who die in consecutive world wars. All, of course, receive the Midas GoodBooks’ pop touch.

What else? Well besides both tangibly released singles, there was August’s free to download Turn It Back, two and a half minutes to leave you wondering how something so simple can be so eye-wateringly good. There was also the small matter of a deal struck with Columbia Records allowing the band to hibernate into the studio with hot new producer Dan Grech. With the resulting debut album due out in time for the festivals, GoodBooks will soon become that band you feel you’ve know your whole life.

LINE UP

Max 'four-arms' Cooke

Christopher Porter

JP Duncan

Leo von Bülow-Quirk

DISCOGRAPHY

VALVES AND ROBOTS EP (Stitch-Up Recordings>2005)

Passchendaele

Walk With Me

Isabella

Sober

WALK WITH ME (Transgressive Records>2006)

Walk With Me

Start/Stop

TURN IT BACK (Columbia Records>2006)

Turn It Back

Turn It Back (Lo-Fi-Fnk Mature Remix)

LENI (Columbia Records>2006)

Leni

The Butcher (We All Fear For You)

Like Humphrey Bogart

THE ILLNESS (Columbia Records>2007)

The Illness

The Illness Instrumental

PASSCHENDAELE (Columbia Records>2007)

Passchendaele

Passchendaele Instrumental

CONTROL (Columbia Records>2007)

Beautiful To Watch

The Illness

Passchendaele

The Curse Of Saul

Alice

Good Life Salesman

Violent Man Lovesong

The Last Day

Walk With Me

Leni

Turn It Back

Start/Stop

LINKS

Good Books>ilovegoodbooks.com

FURTHER LISTENING

Franz Ferdinand

The Klaxons

Editors