Christopher Christopher – KAWAAM | Music Review

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Nobody’s ever going to accuse Switzerland of being a hotbed of rock n roll talent (least of all myself, having lived there for 3 years) but that’s not to say we ought to ignore it totally. Everybody knows that the best non-english speaking nation at churning out great rock music is Sweden but think of this as Sweden for dyslexics.

I spent 18 months living in the town that Christopher Christopher hail from, a place called Baden. It’s a sleepy town about 20 minutes outside of Zürich and by local standards the music scene isn’t half bad. Christopher Christopher, the town’s best band, are a bunch of mop haired Beatles fans who formed a band to escape the dull, sanitised life of small-town Switzerland.

This is a most spectacular effort, and one that cannot be accused of lacking ambition. Opener ‘The Castle’s Calling’  is a big chorused, big sounding mash up that sounds like the Flaming Lips wrestling the Magic Numbers. It’s bright and breezy and a blows open the door that is ‘KAWAAM’ (no, me neither) beautifully. ‘Ghosts’ sounds like Embrace and the chorus of “you’ll be alright, you’ll be safe with me tonight” could have come straight from Danny McNamara’s songbook. ‘Firefighter’ is a Bluetones/Shed Seven britpop mash-up.

This EP is enjoyable and the sort of music that is worthy of being played in the weather that is the exact opposite of what we have right now (at the time of writing it has been raining in London for a very biblical 40 days and 40 nights) – some great sunshine. The influences are distinctly 60’s and 70’s (Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Bowie etc) we’re told but it sounds very 90’s and at just five songs it’s over before you know it, leaving you wanting more. But that’s a good thing. I love this band and so should you.

Kawaam is out now via Anker Platten