Ghosts And Heights - Crash My Model Car

I got this at the same time as the new Orson album (reviewed on Ciao as well) which was quite nice but got a panning from UK music paper NME and with albums like this around it's easy to see why.

Crash My Model Car play pop as it should be: melodic, catchy and with good lyrics while sounding fresh and original. Somewhere between formulaic stadium pop rock and quirky indie pop, CMMC must be heading to be one of the big bands of 2008.
...voice (pea gravel?); first track "In dreams" opens with haunting acoustic guitar, vocals and violin. It sounds a bit like Snow Patrol but SP if they were a cool indie band and not a stadium filling commercial machine. The song swells to a lovely harmony laden chorus.

And that's how it continues. Track two "Sirens" is equally good and a has a slight feel of the Water Boys thrown into the mix; the Irish feel comes ... more

I got this at the same time as the new Orson album (reviewed on Ciao as well) which was quite nice but got a panning from UK music paper NME and with albums like this around it's easy to see why.

Crash My Model Car play pop as it should be: melodic, catchy and with good lyrics while sounding fresh and original. Somewhere between formulaic stadium pop rock and quirky indie pop, CMMC must be heading to be one of the big bands of 2008.

The singer has a great semi gravelly voice (pea gravel?); first track "In dreams" opens with haunting acoustic guitar, vocals and violin. It sounds a bit like Snow Patrol but SP if they were a cool indie band and not a stadium filling commercial machine. The song swells to a lovely harmony laden chorus.

And that's how it continues. Track two "Sirens" is equally good and a has a slight feel of the Water Boys thrown into the mix; the Irish feel comes through because of a slight reckless abandon in the choruses, a trend that continues in track three "West coast train". And because of the fact that they're Celtic - singer / guitarist Iain Morrison grew up on the remote Hebridean Island of Lewis, the son of a world-renowned bagpipe player.

Other tracks mix this sound with a feel of The Cure, and they were no slouches when it came to bothering the charts.

This is a great indie pop album. I played it a lot when I first got it then stopped for a couple days, and when I played it while writing this review it sounded fantastic: I'd got to know the songs and they're all corkers.

Standouts: all of it. It's been getting rave reviews so it's not just me. It's for anyone who likes great pop, anyone who likes the Water Boys, anyone who secretly enjoys Snow Patrol but feels guilty (and of course anyone who is brazen enough to open like Snow Patrol). 

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