Eating in York

Hockey

One of 2009's exciting new bands that somehow skimmed a millimetre below the radar, Hockey have done a worryingly good job of keeping their talents on the downlow for quite some time now. Despite rocking some of last summer's biggest festivals there's little to no chance you'd spot them in the street. You may occasionally find yourself recognising their songs, even if you can't name the track or even know its theirs. Their album, Mind Chaos, was released so late into last year that the poor boys only had one tour date where the audience potentially knew all their songs. But things are a little different now.

Returning to the venue of one of their earliest UK gigs, Hockey headlined Koko at the end of February, and a mighty fine job they did of it too, despite being three quarters under the weather. Itchy had a chat with singer Ben Grubin before the show who had somehow managed to avoid catching the lurgy. The band had arrived in London the morning before for a much-appreciated day off which Ben had used to catch up with his family who were visiting the city. Not very rock 'n' roll, but with so much travelling between shows the band don't have a lot of time for partying. ”We had a lot of fun in Australia“ he admits – apparently they last partied in Melbourne after their gig at the beginning of February.

There is a fair bit of mystery surrounding where their hype snowballed from, but the band seem happy to roll with it, even if a lot of their appearances last summer are a bit of a blur. They landed at Glastonbury, played their set and left, laments Ben, but they had a great time at Bestival, and are particularly excited about this year's Coachella with ”so many good bands playing“. How do they feel about being continually compared to other bands, though? ”NME said we sounded like Mika.“ Itchy said we thought that was a bit harsh. ”I don't mind getting comparisons, just not if they're inaccurate“ which we reckon is fair enough. What about Mind Chaos' promo quote that Hockey are a cross between U2 and MGMT? ”I didn't write that... somebody got overzealous about us being the next big thing... it made us seem, like, annoying or something.“ But no publicity is bad publicity it seems, since they're in a bigger and better place now than back then.

Also plastered all over the Mind Chaos posters was the album art – whose input was that, we wondered? ”That's Jerm,“ (Hockey's bassist Jeremy Reynolds) ”His room in Portland is like In the Line of Fire... like John Malkovich's den.“ There's clearly a lot of creativity bouncing around this foursome. Good to know that there are still bands that actually write their own songs, create their own image and generally actually have talent. But what of the strange quote on their Myspace page, from which their fame grew to noticeable proportions? Is ”Did you throw cake at my boy?“ some kind of deep philosophical code? ”Some guy was hitting on all the girls in a really weird way... he was really drunk and sort of passed out... and our drummer Anthony started throwing cake at him and hit him in the face, so his friend came over and started going ”Did you throw cake at my boy?“ We thought it was a really funny initiation for a fight... I forgot we put it there.“ Good to know that even famous boys will still be boys.

www.hockeyband.com

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