The Seb & Fiona Blog

So Last.fm, the website-radio-network-thingy, has decided to release a Christmas single. By itself, the fact that they’ve got 20 million users (compared with 7.1 million X Factor viewers) is a challenge to the drab sense of inevitability resulting from the existence of both a Christmas number one spot and Simon Cowell. A user poll was set up to decide which track to release, and on Monday it was announced that the winner was Lucky Soul’s extraordinarily catchy ‘Lips are Unhappy’.

Now preordering at 40p a download from Last.fm via the indiestore, the bookies have immediately given it shortening odds of 16/1. If any independent band can be a David to Simon Cowell’s acid-tongued Goliath, it’s Lucky Soul, whose lush, lovestruck songs have stolen thousands of hearts across the world this year. Like Radio ‘name your price’ head, they release their music via their own label: if the unthinkable were to happen and the campaign snowballed to success, this would also be a defining moment in the march of new media vs old. In any case it’s a delightful instance of grassroots guerilla vs nasty, high-trousered dictator. Liberté, egalité, musique pop!

Seb

Lucky Soul’s debut album, The Great Unwanted, is finally out - a whole year and a half after our first, fateful chat with their manager (in The Gun pub in Spitalfields). Here is the verdict:

“An immediate classic.” (Independent on Sunday 5/5)

“Pop at its most glorious and heartbreaking.” (Metro 5/5 - Album of the Week)

“Performs the rare feat of meticulously acknowledging its inspirations while also transcending them.” (Uncut 4/5)

“A glorious, over-romanticised racket.” (Guardian 4/5)

“Their Spector-indebted sound is ice cream sweet, but, like Saint Etienne or The Concretes, they lace it with ground shards of bleak heartbreak and sharp lyrics that’ll have your heart bleeding.” (NME)

“Arriving like a snowstorm in the Sahara, Lucky Soul’s debut is a welcome distraction from the reality rock and eyeliner emo currently swirling around.” (London Lite 5/5)

“Lucky us, this isn’t a mod-ish crush but a full-blown pop affair.” (The Word)

“Sure to put a smile on your face.” (City AM 4/5)

“Stops time like Richard Hawley’s Cole’s Corner.” (Q)

“They take a history’s worth of love-and-loneliness songs and turn them into their own glimmering, shimmering gold.” (Popmatters 9/10)

“Impossible to dislike.” (Observer)

“A lush, harmonious soundscape that looks set to make them one of the brightest new bands of 2007.” (This is Fake DIY)

“A decade on plastic.” (Plan B)

“Excellent.” (Times 4/5)