By all musical rights Hard-Fi should be awful. Their blend of English punk riffs (think Clash guitar stabs and Strummer sneer) and catchy, almost boy-band chorus ought to get up the noses of indie kids and music snobs everywhere.
The problem is, as much as you want to hate Hard to Beat for nicking the swagger from your idols and mentioning "rocking the city", it's just catchy, insightful and tuneful enough to tell you to shut up moaning and have a dance. Hard to Beat is a simple tale of boy-meets-girl on the urban jungle of their home town of Staines, straight out of the Mike Skinner school of tell-it-like-it-looks school of lyrics "Girl you've got something/I like". It's got horn stabs that sound a bit like One More Time by Daft Punk making it more floor-filler than mosh-along and is as stupidly simple as all great pop should be.
Hard-Fi might be getting the blame for bringing the Chav into Indie, but with tunes this catchy we may as well just submit now and let the Burberry cap brigade have their turn. Either way it's got to be better than a full on Ska revival, right?
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