album review: niki & the dove. instinct. 14 may 2012. mercury records
(buy here)

It would be easy to throw comparisons at Niki & The Dove to help describe this album. There’s some Lykke Li in there, a bit of Soko and a lot of Tegan & Sara. Instinct is more than that though. It is a metaphor-tastic furious pure pop album. We know all about some of the tracks already and ‘DJ, Ease My Mind’, ‘The Drummer’ et al certainly find happy bed fellows here. ‘Somebody’ is the perfect pop song and ‘Last Night’ is still nothing short of bloody brilliant. Elsewhere, ‘The Gentle Roar”s heavy drums pulsate through a hypnotic 3:44 and include a fantastic whispered chorus that just hangs about in your head for an hour after you’ve put the record down. Anybody worried whether the album would live up to the hype can sleep easy.

8

I imagine everybody is looking forward to Camden Crawl? I mentioned before that you have to make sure you see Niki & The Dove. Well apparently they’ll be at Koko at about 7pm on Saturday. I haven’t seen the official times etc yet, but go with that for now. To get you in the mood, here’s a taster of the forthcoming album Instinct.

Camden Crawl
4-6 May 2012
Various Venues, Camden
thecamdencrawl.com

In a sentence
Imagine a busy weekend in Camden, and then add thousands of Strongbow’d up revellers enjoying music at venues curated by the best record labels, magazines and promoters London has to offer.

Headliners
Death in Vegas
Alabama 3

If you only see one band
It has to be Niki & The Dove. The Swedish maestros will be somewhere and they’ll be popular so as soon as you have that all important gig guide, make a beeline for their venue.

Hidden down the order
Fixers are listed in the small print. This probably means they’ll be on early so either get your wristband first thing or hope they’re on the Sunday.

Other sockformation favourites
The Futureheads, The Big Pink, Icona Pop, Kwes, Rolo Tomassi, Theme Park, Three Trapped Tigers, Brontide, Dutch Uncles, Fiction, Toy, Trophy Wife.

as an early indication of why 2012 will be the year of the niki & the dove, here’s their brand new video for ‘dj ease my mind’. another soaring synthy pop single with that little bit of je ne sais pas, malin and gustaf have yet again struck gold.

now and again a band comes along that just makes you repeat the word wow everytime they do anything. right now that band is niki & the dove and this is the video to the infectious ‘the drummer’. wow. they’re off on tour in november so if you live in brighton, glasgow or london make sure you don’t miss them.