Club Smith

Club Smith is four songwriters, 3 to 20 plus performers, and a collection of collaborative recordings with various producers. The Leeds group’s interpretation of their repertoire is in such flux that they are as much entwined with choppy and sound-scaped guitar music from decades past as they are absorbed by synth decadence and indie discos.

Debut album “Appetite for Chivalry” took the themes of Blur’s “13? and “Think Tank” as it’s blueprint and built the record on seminal 80s influences such as Prince, Talk Talk and Japan. The result is an album that shuffles from aggressive rackets to emotive plateau’s swamped in an atmosphere of grief and despair; the record feels like a cathartic journey set atop the contradiction of desolate lyrics and upbeat arrangements.

Not resting on one approach to their songs the band worked with producers Lance Thomas (Ladytron / PJ Harvey) and Dave Bascombe (Goldfrapp / Depeche Mode) in dissecting and rebuilding single “Beautiful & Useless”, and the bands’ debut album was recorded in two parts with two very different producers to create intentionally scattered and fractured points of interest in the record.

Recent projects by the group have involved crowd-sourcing musicians to create and play new parts on Club Smith songs then perform them live with the band on video in a large ensemble formed, rehearsed, and recorded in the same day. For another music video 2 members of the band trained intensively 5 days a week for 3 months to perfect their performance in a boxing-themed shoot.

These efforts have not gone unnoticed, with the band personally selected to tour with Kaiser Chiefs and a number of their local contemporaries. Club Smith were also long-listed as one of the hardest working bands of 2012 by AIM and recognised by the PRS Foundation as worthy of a grant to further develop their live music projects and performances in 2013 and beyond.

“Appetite for Chivalry flits from moody to euphoric, clocking up plenty of anthemic choruses and buoyant beats in the territory inbetween…it proves that what is commonly referred to as indie-rock doesn’t have to be tired and clichéd laddy bullshit.”
(Drowned in Sound)

“Club Smith bristle with the fight-or-flight energy of people with a very important message to deliver, very quickly.”
(The Fly)

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