White Rose Movement - Girls In The Back (Independiente)
UK release date: 3 April 2006
It's 1984. You are dividing your time equally between strikes, counting
your one pound notes and watching Daley Thompson at the LA Olympics. At the
weekends, should you pop out to sink a few pints and cut some rugs at the
local discotheque, you may well find yourself boogying to something closely
resembling White Rose Movement's latest single.
Girls In The Back is revivalist in the extreme, with a great big,
slapping bass line, plenty of synth and electronic beeps to fill in the
gaps. Which is ok I suppose, if that's your particular bag, but there's a
vague feeling that in their efforts to be retro, WRM are disappearing
so far up their own arses that they can taste the hairspray on their
artfully crafted fringes. Vocally, this is irksomely repetitive and the
whole affair falls quite a long way short of their best, namely Love Is A
Number.
It's 2006. You are dividing your time between shopping in charity shops,
cruising MySpace and checking your hair. When you go on a night out, you go
to nights called Trash, or Tramp, or something, and you might nod along to
the White Rose Movement's latest single. This will no doubt attract a
reasonable audience, but does anyone else think that '80s revivalism is
getting a bit, well, old?