Some time last week I received an email from Songkick- ‘The Twang are playing Camden Rocks’.  Yes, it may shock you to read, but The Twang didn’t sit on their hands after ‘Two Lovers’ or ‘Either Way’; they have released 3 albums since then and the most recent was in early March of this year. This got me wondering about bands from the glory English indie years circa 2005 and what happened to some of the more prominent names.

The Rakes

The Rakes came onto the scene in 2003 and released their first album, Capture/Release, in 2005. The album spawned ’22 Grand Job’, a great track with the video showing lead singer, Alan Donohoe, as a happy cross between Jarvis Cocker and Ian Curtis.

The Rakes split in 2009 and Alan went on to start a solo project called The Champagne Campaign and released ‘Dennis and Margaret’ in 2013. He now works as a software developer for Propellernet, a search engine marketing and website optimisation consultancy firm in Brighton. Make of that what you will, but fair play to Alan for putting his qualms with a 9-5 aside.

Drummer of The Rakes, Lasse Petersen, joined Wolf Gang for their second album, released in 2014 called Alveron. Considering the popularity of Wolf Gang’s first album, Suego Faults, Alveron seemed to go under the radar in the UK and news about the band has ground to a halt since the albums’ release in October.

Art Brut

In 2004 we heard, repetitively, that Eddie Argos and a few other arty folk had Formed A Band. A fucking great decision on their part as Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll was a standout album for swathes of 20 somethings taking a year out of University. The good news is that Art Brut are still around. The line-up has changed here and there but, from a look on their website, they are still occasionally putting shows. The shows aren’t specifically music; Eddie is doing a spoken word tour starting in Scotland in May, before that he was exhibiting some of his art at SXSW and it looks like he is soon to release a book

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The Zutons

I wasn’t going to do The Zutons as I imagined it would be pretty boring considering the money ‘Valerie’ must have bought in for them. Alas, I was wrong.  Lead singer Dave McCabe has formed a new group called Dave McCabe & The Ramifications. From what I can find online the group is pretty new, 2015 new. All that is currently available is a video of McCabe, looking like a gothic Justin Lee Collins trying to get to the shops without being noticed by the press, next to an as-yet-unknown man in a geometric white mask. A mix of synth and vocal effects hurl the track beyond point of recognition of the ex-Zutons frontman until, 50 seconds in, the vox effects disappear and McCabe’s iconic burr join the throng.

Zuton’s bassist, Russell Pritchard, is now playing with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and the guitarist, Paul Molloy, is working with Liverpool born singer/songwriter Candie Payne. It is not clear what Abi Harding, the saxophonist, is up to at the moment but her twitter states “Saxophonist, singer”.

Boy Kill Boy

“Talk talk to Suzeh” was belted out of many a gullet in 2005. The song was re-released in 2006, the same year as their album, Civilian, came out. The album wasn’t all that much to shout about and unfortunately the band turned out to be a bit of a one hit wonder. They tried to reciprocate the popularity of ‘Suzie’ with their second album in 2008; however, the album was not received well and barely made a footprint in the soggy soil of indie.

Frontman Chris Peck put ‘Riversong’ on Youtube in 2011 and has since formed Chris Peck & The Family Tree. ‘Riversong’ is now a demo on Chris Peck & The Family Tree’s website along with a couple of other tracks. If you are looking for the same sort of music as BKB, be prepared to be a bit disappointed as they sound a bit like a low-fi 2012 Mumford and Sons with a fiddle. Not ideal.

Pete Carr, Boy Kill Boy’s man on the ivories, went on to play with Marina & The Diamonds.

The Others

These guys are still going. No idea how, but they are. They came to light in about 2004 with some guerilla gigs to fill the gaps for people who just missed The Libertines. After their 2005 self-titled album and 2006 album Inward Parts the band went quiet until Christmas Eve 2012, when they released some free demos via their bandcamp page. Due to the shockingly high demand the band announced a decision to release a free download package every month in 2013. The band had a gig in London late last year and 2 gigs in America in December. When I mentioned to a friend that The Others were still going he replied with “Christ, that’s like the boner a corpse gets”.

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