The Poor Rich Ones

You know that feeling, when you know you're right, but no-one else is listening? That's what it's like standing in Metro's tonight. Everyone else is watching Electrelane or Six by Seven or Serafin but your correspondent is among 15 or so people waiting for a long-established yet relatively unknown band from Norway to take the stage.

And when they do, it's worth it. Remember that scene in 1984 with the unicorn trotting around a lush Big Brother-free landscape? That's what The Poor Rich Ones sound like. Swelling aural tides of dizzy hope and uncomplaining desolation... restrained odes to innocence that explode in slow-motion into grandiose, hypnotic symphonies... angelic, glassy vocals that, as they peak, twist your diaphragm into shapes you never knew it could assume... and utter, defiant naïveté. This is Radiohead's [nice dream] without the bitter experience of two or three decades of existence, and it employs all the gorgeous self-destructive passion that Haven will never be good enough actors to fake. It's the sound of absolute surrender, acceptance of a defeat that was inevitable from the start, and from the opening twinkling array of chords, it breaks your heart. What more could you ask for? One can only hope the sense of resignation and submission that makes their music so compelling doesn't permeate their will to succeed outside Norway.