Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and I’m wishing you a good Easter Sunday with my latest installment of ‘Scuzz Sundays’ on the blog, given how it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! To be 100% transparent, I barely thought about ‘Easter’ this year and since ‘Easter Music’ isn’t really a thing, and it is not inclusive for all cultures and relgions anyway, I thought that I’d simply cover a band who have been in the news lately this week. The band in question is Hard-Fi, who released three albums between the years of 2004 and 2011 which all did decent business, spawning well-remembered hit singles like ‘Cash Machine’ and ‘Living For The Weekend’ in the process, before going on hiatus in 2014. The band received one Mercury Prize and two BRIT Awards nominations for their work, as well as a #1 album in 2007 and a 2x platinum certification for the sales of their debut album. They also dipped their toes into podcasting with their series ‘Hard-Fi: Rockin’ The City’ that was widely available in 2007 and even got nominated for ‘Best Podcast’ at the Digital Music Awards that year. I think that ‘Hard To Beat’ must be their best-known single as it did the rounds on the soundtracks of ‘FIFA 06’ and ‘MLB 06: The Show’ shortly following release and it reached #9 on the UK Singles Chart as well as #34 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks Chart in the US too. If you’ve been following Hard Fi-related news lately – and you would be forgiven if you haven’t honestly due to them not being around for such a long time – they have been teasing a rare fifteenth anniversary show for ‘Stars Of CCTV’ with posters spotted on the London Underground that features a date pointing to a gig in mid-October. Just don’t shout ‘Hard-Fi’ if you see it next to your fellow passengers because they would probably take you for some kind of a mental lunatic. Let’s revisit ‘Hard To Beat’ below.
A series of social media posts relating to ‘Stars Of CCTV’ have been posted gradually by Hard-Fi elsewhere and they have not performed live together since 2014. In April 2020, Richard Archer – the frontman of the Staines-Upon-Thames formed indie rock outfit – told NME that Hard-Fi were considering a return to the stage to mark their unforgotten first album’s 15-year milestone, saying, “That album has defined people’s lives and when they were growing up. We’ll definitely do it at some point, but with new music too so we’re not just trading on past glories”, in an interview. ‘Hard To Beat’ takes obvious cues from Daft Punk’s ironically overplayed 2002 hit track ‘One More Time’ with filtered disco guitar sounds mixing with a more urban twist created by the lightly distorted Synths and Grunge-driven Bass melodies. Lyrics like “You in a short skirt/Shining eyes of deep brown/You had a dirty hook, you caught me on your hook” feel rhythmic and have a catchy twang to them, but the light darkness of the sexually aroused emotions consummates the rather evident marriage between the LCD Soundystem-influenced House genre explorations and the more “ladd-ish” feel of the ruthlessly driving mid-00’s lead guitar riffs. A hint of paranoia comes through, with lyrics like “I said come on, let’s dance/We’ve got to take our chance/You whispered in my ear/You wanna get out of here?” that talk about living in an environment like London, even though the band are much closer to Cornwall. Some obvious shots of Franz Ferdinand and The Clash are in here too, with the danceable Synths drawing out the vocals at the end and gruff Drum melodies riffing against the slightly more expansive electronic effects that create the Disco vibe most vibrantly. There is a light political commentary on surveillance and urban decay within their songwriting in the grander scheme of things beyond ‘Hard To Beat’ as a standalone single, but Archer doesn’t quite have the sharp-pointed vocal dexterity of Maximo Park’s Paul Smith or the socially observational abilities of Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner – two comparable indie rock bands that also found fame in a similar timeframe – but there’s an admirable attempt to ground the material in a sense of place that isn’t just tied to London in here, nevertheless. The Disco vibe is damn infectious too, but the lyricism works better when they’re smoothly trying to pick up love interests instead of reciting pains of urban dilapidation. That said, the track is a fun and melodic single that wears it’s influences on it’s sleeves and it simply feels very catchy. It felt a little disposable for the time but, admittedly, it still gets a fair amount of airplay today. It has stood the test of time because it is so memorable and pretty dynamic, if nothing very special. It goes to show that sometimes a simple throwback is, well, hard to beat.
Thank you for checking out my latest post because your support is absolutely valued every time, and I will be here kicking off the brand new week’s worth of music posts tomorrow with a review for a recent release by an Atlanta-based Hip-Hop duo who are also founding members of the Spillave Village collective. Their well-received second studio album, ‘Ghetto Gods’, was released in February via Dreamville Records.
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