This is a review of "Bianca" recorded by The Nearly Men. The review was written by Russell Leeming in 2007.

Schadenfreude.

I bet The Nearly Men do this a lot. To put it quite frankly, there’s a hell of a lot of bands out there that are not fit to lick these talented bastards' shoes. In fact, students doing shit courses aren’t the problem as to why we’re not seeing enough teachers, nurses, doctors etc. It’s people in shit bands. If everyone left their shit band and trained to be doctors then the music journalists could do the same. House can be inspiring too.

Although pop groups can just carry on as they are. If the worst comes to worst, I’d rather not have Kian from Westlife shoving a camera up my arse, thank you very much.

My producer is shouting at me. He wants to know what the music sounds like. Lets go backwards, and show the kool kidz how it’s done. ‘Salt Dub’ is song three, a good old instrumental to finish things off, centred around a protruding heavy bassline that sounds like Kevin Betsy trying to run after a football that’s been tied to a string and being pulled by Bond villain Roman Abramovich as soon as our hero Betsy gets agonisingly close to kicking the bugger. It’s that fucking good. It’s bloody strange too, the type of music that could soundtrack a drug use scene in a mad indie film.

Song two and song one are the mainies though, the ones that make your ears prick. Song two is the title track, ‘Bianca’. The music sounds like a cross between The La’s, early Noel G b-sides and the Bunnymen. The singer sounds like a very ill John Power; there’s a stunning originality for such a voice singing over such basic, yet brilliant pop music. One moment there’s serene calm, the next there’s schizophrenic wailing while an acoustic guitar strums happily in the background. Production wise, it’s scratchy, and one minute the vocal is far louder than any of the instruments and the next it can’t be heard. But this only seems to add to the music for the good, in a world where everything seems to lose it’s magic once in the hands of meddling LA sheeners.

Opener ‘Am I, Aren’t I?’ is a lesson that sometimes simplicity can be a great thing. Built over another catchy melody (no, it doesn’t sound like The Kooks), it’s the highlight of an engaging CD. The lyrical repetition also makes it one to remember, so all you Nearly Men fans can sing it loud at their gigs. Are they, aren’t they nice?

They’re cunts though, cause it’s much harder to do a review that gushes about something. I’m suing them for writer's block.

Bring back The Darkness.