Sound Advice: The Cooper Temple Clause.

Just when you thought it was safe to let your music-hating maiden aunt out from that cupboard under the stairs, Canned Applause presents Sound Advice, the blog equivalent of a bouquet of service station flowers thrown hastily upon the grave of a loved one whose funeral you missed because there was that thing on telly. Sound Advice sits as a eulogy to all those bands who flirted momentarily with greatness but ultimately fell by the wayside somewhere down the long and winding road of rock. An ocular coda to those whose sonic output at times felt like God himself was stroking your adrenal gland but who never could quite translate early promise/good B-Sides/innovative haircuts into any significant fanbase or musical legacy. But we can’t all, and some simply don’t. It is with this humbling thought in mind that we turn to those cheeky Berkshire nearly-men, The Cooper Temple Clause:

So many bands are rubbish retreads of a thousand things you weren’t bothered about in the first place. The Cooper Temple Clause were different. Criminally ignored during almost a decade at the indie coalface, their music bounds into your lap like a giddy terrier on Christmas morning and leaves your ears glowing with its incandescent radiance. Treat yourself to mere seconds of their seminal debut ‘See This Through & Leave’ and you’d have to be dead from the neck up and the waist down not to immediately fall in love with them in that gooey, constrictive sort of way a mad old lady loves the last of her cats who have yet to run away. Their final record, ‘Make This Your Own’, boasted tracks so rammed with empathy and surging pathos that they could win back a lover the day after you were caught trying to shag their dog. ‘Waiting Game’ and ‘What Have You Gone & Done’ were particular highlights that reflected the band’s unique brand of ham-fisted loveliness, like drunkenly trying to shove a box of Quality Street through that-girl-you-like’s letterbox after closing time. But things fall apart; the centre cannot hold and nothing lasts forever. TCTC stayed just long enough to convince the good and the few of their brilliance before slipping away gently into the dying of the light, clutching our hearts and minds. Even though the dust has long since settled on the corpse of the Reading quintet, the music still sounds like the future belongs to them.

Below is one of the more sublime moments from their second outing, known to band and fans alike simply as ‘New Toys’. More fun than running up your keys up and down Bob Geldof’s new limo, it’s as woozy and blissful as downing the contents of a tranquilizer dart and looking into a kaleidoscope until your brain melts. It won’t solve any of your problems, but then, what will?