ONESTOWATCH: Dutch Uncles

Stephen Kelly finds more imaginative art-poppers from Manchester…

The likes of Delphic and Everything Everything ensured that 2010 was the year Manchester exiled the cock-swinging banalities of lad-rock in favour of scintillatingly smart art-pop. Given the city’s history for such output, it was enough for the hysterically nostalgic among us to start banging on about a ‘renaissance’. “Ah! The grand renaissance, my boy!” chuckles Duncan Wallis in his finest Colonel Mustard impression. “Hmm, I wouldn’t use that word – I mean, it’s never going to be Factory Records again, is it? – but Manchester does feel very intense at the moment…” And he should know, for he stands at the front of Dutch Uncles: one of 2011’s most exciting prospects. Hailing from Marple, on the outskirts of Manchester, the five-piece (who are releasing their second album next year) list their influences among King Crimson, minimal composer Steve Reich and Talking Heads, but don’t appear to be overly defined by them. Instead, in a time where indie music’s trending modus operandi is rooting itself within the darkness of silence and space (James Blake, The xx, Foals et al) their sound is jarring, abrupt and with guitar lines interlocked like woven gold. This is, of course, before being glossed with pop hooks and re-packaged with sex, death, anxiety and… incest, the latter being ‘herkyjerky’ single, ‘Fragrant’ – which Duncan assures us was inspired by a documentary rather than, er, personal experience: “One thing I always wanted to do as a lyricist is to do nasty songs about sex, sleaze and death that don’t sound nasty,” he says. Lovely. Yet, if you find that alluringly odd then you should catch him performing them live: jerky, theatrical, flamboyant and wonderfully strange, his stagecraft and penchant for oversized shirts has been lazily compared – as every musical Manc is – to Morrissey and Ian Curtis. “Argh! You can’t escape those references!” he laughs. Pah, don’t worry Duncan, next year Dutch Uncles will be leading the scene.

Dutch Uncles’ LP will be released on Memphis Industries later this year.