Club Smith – ‘No Friend Of Mine’ (Front Wall Records)
This is a better than average thumping post punk single. I made the odd choice to watch the video for the single first. Lead singer Sam trained for 3 months as a boxer for the band’s ‘No Friend Of Mine’ video. Wish more bands were as hard working.
The single is backed with two tracks ‘Young Defeatists’ and a remix of ‘Your No Friend Of Mine’ by Co-pilots (Jamie Ellis of Battle and Russell Lissack of Bloc Party) the first two do get me writing, the remix, I am sorry to report seems a little pedestrian, reverb, flat tempo, were they running low on Cubase memory?
However, there is no denying the strength of the title track, Club Smith have just finished a lengthy spell as support to the Pigeon Detectives on a busy UK Tour, I can imagine that ‘No Friend Of Mine’ can only add to the band’s great live repertoire of songs, like ‘The Green Room’ or ‘Lament’. But wait a minute, apart from the remix, any of you that bought the ‘Loss’ EP, already has a version of the title track, a little brighter and beefed up here though and, if you got the second EP, ‘The Process’ you could get hold of ‘Young Defeatists’. No weird thing, to be honest, but that’s why this indie rock single sounds so strong, err, cos it is!
Steve Janes