Other than the fact that Five Mile Smile are a trio from Belfast who have reformed after over 10 years away from the limelight, I know very little about them. Clearly, they want their music to do the talking and are indeed issuing a ‘Call to Arms’ to fans old and, hopefully, new by releasing this free-to-download single.
So if their music is doing the talking, what is it saying? It’s saying the band are positioning themselves somewhere between the White Stripes and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, with a touch of Kasabian in terms of vocal melody. It’s Troggs-like garage-blues; raw, noisy, stomp-y and shout-y. But it’s also pretty listenable actually for a style of music that, I must confess, I am not a huge fan of or maybe, more accurately, grew tired of after the initial wave of bands doing this style.
10 years ago this was very much the in-thing. It had that freshness that even a recycled sound can have when a band does it right, the way the White Stripes etc did it back then. Has that boat sailed leaving Five Mile Smile trailing behind in its wake? It may have in terms of what is high profile in the mainstream, but there is still an audience out there for this kind of ‘honest’ music. Are you one of them?
Check the song out on a free download here.
