The Strypes

We live a fairly low-key life, I'll admit. We haven't owned a TV for 10 years. I rarely even buy a music magazine these days. But, hey...I don't live under a rock, so how comes I'm the last person on Earth to have heard The Strypes? I followed a link to this very performance in total ignorance just a couple of weeks ago and in very short order my chin was resting on the keyboard. I really thought I'd stumbled onto something unknown, but it seems that the whole world is talking about them. Where have I been?

The average age of this band is 15....15 fer flip's sake! But if you think they look young here, check-out their 2011 version of 'Taxman' elsewhere on YouTube, which makes them now look like grizzled old men by comparison. I realise theirs is probably a carefully calculated image, put together by someone with access to an excellent record collection (their parents...or grandparents?) and that there is a suspicion of a extra guitar being twanged behind the scenes somewhere, but I absolutely refuse to don my cynical hat. How exciting are The Strypes in this world of talentless X-Factor wannabes to which we've all  become accustomed?

It appears that, until recently, their set largely consisted of many of the same R&B covers that the Stones, Beatles, Who & Kinks cut their teeth on all those years ago, but now they've started writing their own stuff and if 'Blue Collar Jane' is anything to go by, they are no slouches.


When they become huge, as they surely will, The Strypes will no doubt drift off my radar and onto every bedroom wall in the country, and quite rightly so. For now though, it's enormous fun to hear these tunes bashed out as they should be - with youthful verve and abandon. I'll be back in 2017 to check out their psychedelic period.