Wolf Gang used to be touted as the sophisticated, suave alternative to tuneful guitar pop, although turned out to be all too tame for the most part. Wild Beasts meanwhile are indubitably the Lake District's most celebrated musical mouthpiece, yet while their melodramatic (increasingly) popular songs may well be doused in suavity, their predilection for sexual innuendo and incessant hooting and howling is oft enervating. Emerging from Kirkby Lonsdale to straighten the misdirections of his compeers, James Bennett, aka Mozart Parties, has readied the sort of single that would have lined Woolworths' coffers with pocketmoney a decade ago. That single is the sumptuous Black Cloud and while its accompanying B-side, Raining At The Crossroads, is as twee as a gambol She & Him mitten in She & Him mitten with Belle & Sebastian atop a snow-dusted Hampstead Heath, the leading number is chirpier than that insufferable Lally Stott magnum opus as Bennett's vocals playfully shadow lightly scuffed guitar lines. It'll hit slightly superior shelves to those of the now-defunct high street joint on October 31st as a limited run of 300 on 7", thanks to a release on the supreme Merok Records. MOZART PARTIES - BLACK CLOUD by Merok Records
