If you are watching the Little Tate men on the main stage at Reading or Leeds this year, maybe you should have a taste of the European Lover for yourself. It's your best chance to judge the single favourably as, on its own, it doesn't quite grab one's goat.
It is, remarkably, the seventh single by the Sheffield indie-pop rockers. Surely they should have made it big by now? The band only formed in 2005, so they've done well to produce so efficiently, but don't we all go for quality over quantity in the end?
They're the Northern Holloways, with repetitive lyrics bouncing along with irritable buoyancy. It certainly isn't as up to scratch as previous singles, and may have trouble being a success with solely its own leg to stand on. It could work as an album filler, but alone, Little Man Tate are set to generate the nations first ever Mexican wave of cringe. Rhyming 'Paris' (or maybe that should be 'Parieeeeeeeeee', in true franco-tone), 'Sicily' and 'me' is pleasant enough, but it's hardly going to win any awards for innovation.
The track is about becoming detached from a lover whilst away on a gap year. However, the chorus probably wouldn't appeal to anyone above the age of 14, such is the simplicity of the trite lyrics. Listening to this too often might cause the imaginative part of your mind to grow a creativity inhibiting fungus. With the incessant refrain, "Did you spare a little thought for me" gradually decomposing your brain, by the time it's finally over, all your left thinking is that, if this was your partner whining desperately while you're trying to enjoy the time away from him, you'd take the first chance to shut the cretin up with a big flag saying 'YOU'RE DUMPED'.
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