missdavinalee

Come on, Miss Davina Lee
Imagine a Strokes beat with a PJ Harvey-esque vocalist. Imagine awesome. Imagine Come On. - ThisMessageWillSelf Destruct

GigJunkie: What’s the story behind missdavinalee? How did the band come about?

Davina: I used to have a band with Tom Moth from Florence and the Machine called The Dave Browns when we had a little rest from harpy folk stuff I teamed up with Roald from uni, Angus and more recently Gareth and Jenny using some of my old stuff that I played with Tom but giving it more of a pop push.

GigJunkie: You want to describe your music to a stranger on the street, what would you say/who would you compare yourself to?

Davina: I would hesitate and umm and arrr and eventually quote someone who thought we sounded a cross between Blondie and The Yeah Yeah Yeah's.

GigJunkie: Your debut single is soon to be released, how can people get their hands on that?

Davina: iTunes and Amazon!

GigJunkie: What is ‘Come On!’ about?

Davina: It’s the first few months of love and you wanna share it all around and join a hippy commune.

GigJunkie: What else can we expect from the band in the coming months? Any upcoming shows?

Davina: We are just finishing off a mini tour around UK which will end on The Flowerpot on the 23rd and Birmingham on the 24th September. It’s our first and we can’t wait to do it again. We are currently recording an album.

GigJunkie: What was the first gig you ever went to? And which is the best you’ve been to?

Davina: The first gig I think was Cypress Hill on their Black Sunday tour and the first time Id ever been to Brixton it was so good, hip hop heads and grungers altogether in one place! The best? That’s a tough one more recently Leftfield at Rockness and PJ Harvey at Shepherds Bush Empire on her ‘Is This Desire’ tour, I went on my own and was completely absorbed by her!

GigJunkie: If we were to look at your MP3 player, what would we find on there at the moment?

Davina: Foals, Fleetwood Mac and Darwin Deez.

GigJunkie: If you weren’t carving out a musical career for yourself, what would you be doing?

Davina: I have no idea! Just tinkering with different instruments, learning a new "therapy" (I work as a massage therapist and currently training to be a reflexologist) hanging out with my pet rabbit and my dear friends in the pub.

GigJunkie: What challenges do you think new bands face? What makes you stand out from the horde of new artists?

Davina: Get out there and do it! It took me a long time to realise that you can do everything that a record company does (apart from owning thousands of pounds!!) I am lucky to have a wonderful band who care as much as I do about putting on a show. Stand out? We are just a little band that like playing and hanging out together :)

GigJunkie: Any final words for your fans?

Davina: Come to a show! Let’s have Whiskey Mac together!

missdavinalee's first single ‘Come On!’ is out now on Helix Music and available on iTunes and Amazon via: http://www.missdavinalee.com/comeon - GigJunkie

Sounding like a cross between the Blondie, Talking Heads, B52s and PJ Harvey - that's missdavinalee - and Xtaster recommends that you check the group out.
Their quirky pop sounds were used on a recent online advert by Hewlett Packard and leading London jewellers and fashionistas Tatty Devine invited them to headling a recent launch party. Cool creds indeed.
- XTaster

Come On! signals its intent from the first thrashy note of the opening guitar riff - it’s a brash, loud, in-your-face number that deserves the title’s exclamation mark.

It’s also polished and well thought-out; the bright synth arpeggios add variety and the Kills-esque male-female duet in the second verse is a perfect touch. Overall, Come On! is everything a rock song should be - sassy, punchy, and catchy, and is a great debut for the London quintet.

Listen out for the album scheduled for release early next year - on the evidence of Come On!, it should be a banger.
- triplew.me

WATCH THIS SPACE.....

AND CHECK THIS ONE....

MISS DAVINALEE



Come On!
out September 20th 2010
available via iTunes and Amazon
Helix Music / LIX 1
www.myspace.com/missdavinalee
www.missdavinalee.com/comeon

Having been chosen to lend their quirky pop sounds to the animators of a recent online advert by Hewlett Packard and by leading London jewellers and fashionistas Tatty Devine to headline the recent launch party for their new Covent Garden store, hotly tipped quintet missdavinalee are set to release their first single 'Come On!' on Monday 20th September on Helix Music (available on iTunes and Amazon via http://www.missdavinalee.com/comeon ).

Check out the single on Soundcloud here (available to stream or add to widgets, blogs, podcasts and apps): http://soundcloud.com/brucehay/missdavinalee-come-on



Born and brought up in West Harrow, singer, guitarist and all round trouble-maker Davina Lee Cooke ("I like Foals, PJ Harvey, Nirvana and Shangri-Las") assembled her band line-up of bassist and wearer of the hairy chops Roald Madland (who, although first inspired to make music by an A-Ha cassette, formed his first band at the age of 10 to perform AC/DC covers), electronic wizard and cardigan collector Angus Wilson (who used to write jingles for MTV) and Gareth Ashton (plays drums back-to-front) in East London in 2008. Completing the line-up last year with keyboardist, tattoo lover and certified band hair and make-up specialist Jenny Green, the band have spent the first half of 2010 carefully crafting the early tracks for their debut album, due out early next year.
- Run Riot

We all know that using comparisons is just, plain, lazy journalism but, seeing as the press release mentioned a Blondie likeness, the coincidence that only this morning I was listening to the seminal Parallel Lines on the way to work and the fact that I am a lazy, lazy man, then I think it is fair that I use this observation to kick off the review. So how do Missdavinalee match up to the band that famously put pop sensibility into punk?

On ‘Come On’ the guitars are a great deal more abrasive and lack a Chris Stein introduction type riff, while the keyboards have a more techno, bloopy, tone than the osculating 70’s sound favoured by Jimmy Destri. Davina Lee’s vocals do not deliver the pop melodies in a way that Debbie Harry seem to do effortlessly, in fact there is a lack of melodic structure that Blondie would never let slip through their quality control net. That said it is this incohesive approach, along with Lee’s shrill, PJ Harvey (also mentioned in the press release) influenced vocal that make this song an interesting diversion. Musically more garage punk than pop punk and vocally more Patti Smith than Debbie Harry, Blondie they are not. However there is just enough evidence here to believe that there could be better things to come from Missdavinalee in the near future. - Culture Deluxe