Not Many Experts

Try reading an article about new A&M signees Chapel Club without tripping across a careless mention of White Lies. As I seem to have inadvertently proved, it’s pretty much impossible. Yet why should it be? Ultimately, the comparisons between these two bands should both begin and end and at the fact that they are both on the pay of Universal, both use guitars to create a tempting sort of gloom, and Chapel Club seem poised for the same sort of success as White Lies have squeezed out of a fruitful relationship with the NME and Radio 1. Even having said that, where they get their money from cannot define them nor greatly affect their sound; there is enormous scope for diversity amongst the band of groups who use guitars to spread melancholy over their listeners; and it’s entirely possible that they both achieve success without mirroring one another.

Even in having refuted these claims, I have not done Chapel Club justice. The fact is that it’s tempting to look cynically at the scepticism that many critics have regarding White Lies as retrospective criticism. This is far from the case for many, though. Even back in those promising days where only “Death” had appeared, there were many who were calling for investigations into whether this was really…. a real band?! The way that they jumped from upbeat indie in their previous incarnation as Fear Of Flying to a fully formed aesthetic product and playing a sold out gig to industry heads without having lifted a finger… Even back then it was thought to be slightly disconcerting, if exciting and full of possibility.

And what of Chapel Club? The same cannot be said for the roots of their hype. Where White Lies were conspicuous for a seeming absence of any reason for the industry to be getting excited about them, and thus the blank was filled in by many as the shadowy movements of major label money, that which has got people talking about Chapel Club is not just entirely lucid, but laudable as well. The story, if you choose to believe it (and only the most dedicated cynic wouldn’t) is that Chapel Club cut their teeth on the grindstone of self-arranged gigs in disused warehouses around London last summer. Following a string of well attended gigs, demos began floating around the more perceptive blogs – all the usual contenders. Is it really surprising that A&M, who actually do this for a living, managed to pick up on the beginnings of Chapel Club’s hype? The quality of the early demos are certainly sufficient to encourage this sort of response from a label.

But the music… White Lies, though we enjoyed building them up, were ravaged upon the release of their debut album in early 2009 for what many critics believed to be a lack of soul. “To Lose My Life” was, for many, a hollow shell that superficially displayed real heart, but was found to be completely without substance after more than a couple of tepid listens. The same cannot be said for Chapel Club. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t approach them with some suspicions après “the White Lies debacle”, but the three demos that have so far surfaced are heart warmingly genuine – far from the obvious and portentous emoting that White Lies were fond of. The finest example of this is recent single “O Maybe I” that fumbles along unselfconsciously on the back of enormous drums, and recedes back into lead singer Lewis Bowman’s heart bursting vocals.

Genuinely aorta stretching, hard working, and song-writing geniuses, it’s not only unfair and lazy to compare Chapel Club to White Lies, it’s an insult to their superiority, in every way possible.

PS: You can now follow Not Many Experts on Twitter. Life is good.