Silent Disco Punch Up – Cursor Major (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Us journo’s and music writers, we like nothing better than assigning labels to bands and their music. The fashionable thing at the moment is to look for retro-references, particularly 80’s influences and cite those hazy and creative post-punk times as a golden seam that is still being mined today. Guilty! But what if you could throw a curve ball to us lazy music scribes? What if you could harness all those wonderful creative forces and not come across as bandwagoning? What if you could play with gloriously lush quirky pop tones but make them totally forward looking rather than rose-tinted and backward glancing? What if you could make a musical argument for a new year zero and offer up three tracks as a call to arms for a new pop movement? And what if you could do all of that without looking like you are even trying to do anything other than write and release a few groovy tunes? Well, then you would be called Cursor Major.

Cursor Major’s appeal has always been their ability to craft the most accessible, infectious and unique songs, an alternative to alt-pop, a double bluff which sees them able both occupy the centre ground and offer a brilliant alternative to it at the same time. Their music is rich, wide-screen and full of primary colours but is still forged from a sound that will cause you to throw caution to the wind and dance like a loon if it ever found their way onto nightclub playlists.

Andy’s louche and loquacious Cocker-esque vocal delivery – Jarvis not Joe, obviously – seals the deal. Effortlessly cool, wonderfully detached, slightly knowing and not averse to the odd Bukowski line that you can re-quote to impress people with how clever your music collection is.

As always, it is a wonderful ride through a fantastic and slightly quirky soundscape, but then that was never in question. What is in question is why more pop music isn’t made to these box-ticking standards, but then if it was I wouldn’t look forward to Cursor Major’s latest releases half as much. As you were…