There’s a reason some paths are tried and tested, it’s because they work. Bands who’ve known each other since they were kids. Bands who began at school and went through an exercise book of daft names. Bands who played the covers circuit and learned why the great songs are great, and how to entertain. That path worked for The Beatles, it worked for The Stones and it works now.
When you know that’s also the story of The Landed – two brothers and two friends from Colchester in Essex, you can hear it in their music. Songs that sound like a childhood of swapping all the right records, figuring out the chords and playing gigs in the assembly hall to impress girls who never looked in their direction. Classic, heart-on-sleeve, hooks by the bucket load, joyous, air-punching guitar pop. The kind of songs you write when you don’t want to get a proper job.
And it’s one of those proper jobs that became the spur for Paul Hale, along with his brother David on drums and pals Paul Turner and Dan Currie to make this incarnation of their line-up a serious matter.
“I was working in London as a stockbroker,” Paul explains. “I only did it because I’d flunked school, and when I was 16 my uncle offered me a job there making teas and coffees. It turned out I was pretty good at stock brokering but I hated it. And I had all these songs... It got to the point where I thought, if I don’t quit it now I’m gonna be doing this for the rest of my life.”
Those songs can be heard on The Landed’s debut EP. Somehow managing to mix the new wave edge of The Police with Fleetwood Mac’s sense of melody, the harmonic choruses and homegrown feel of a group like Noah And The Whale with the symphonic rock of ELO. Born too late for Top of the Pops, these songs sound destined to play out over the credits of teen TV dramas. Pop hits for the Shazam generation.
They’ve already attracted the ear of Tom Robinson at 6 Music. And the standout track Taking You Out was made BBC Introducing Track of the Week by Huw Stephens at Radio 1.
The world doesn’t need another reluctant stockbroker. But it could really do with The Landed.