How to feel old in one easy lesson: stumble across the latest release of a band you first heard 37 years ago, a band that you didn’t even know were back making music. I remember being sat in my mate’s bedroom sometime around school being exchanged for college and listening to a song he had discovered and which we proceeded to play to death. That song was Remembrance Day. As far as I was aware B-Movie had left us with a string of singles and one great album as a legacy and returned to the mortal world. So stumbling across this gem of a release, not to mention the discovery that I have two more albums to savour and observe, was a most pleasant surprise.
Stalingrad is the sound of a band who grew up in the swirling post-punk years of sonic experimentation returning to the fray older and wiser. It would fit right in amongst their initial creative bursts but as you might expect it is sleeker, softer-edged, finer honed and its textures more interwoven than before. Both this and its accompanying track, Somewhere Cold, also bring that inherent melancholy that was always present to the surface.
Cool enough to be cultish but accessible enough to be commercial, the B-Movie of today sit across many genres. Moody enough to appeal to the gothic fraternity but neatly swerving the parody that it is easy for that genre to fall into, hipster enough for the modern alt-set yet more interested in substance than style, though style it has in spades. Retro popsters will love it as will those looking for something on the money with today’s and indeed tomorrow’s new musical heartbeat. I’m so glad we met up again after all this time.
