Band : The Magic Numbers
Album title : The Runaway
Label : Heavenly Records – Cooperative Music
Distributor : V2
Release date : 07/06/2010
Release : CD

This British Indie Rock band’s line-up has the wacky twist of consisting of two pairs of brothers and sisters. Romeo Stodart (lead vocals & lead guitar) and his 6-year younger sister Angela (bass & vocals) were born in Trinidad (Caribbean), the children of a Scottish father and a Portuguese mother whom was an Opera singer with her own TV show. The family fled an Islamic coup attempt in 1990 and moved into New York, before moving to London in the mid ‘90s. Sean Gannon (drums) and his sister Angela (melodica, percussion, glockenspiel, vocals) are of Irish descent but lived in Hanwell, London, where they became friends with their neighbours, the Stodarts. Before starting The Magic Numbers in late 2002, Sean and Romeo (both the elder) had spent some time together trying to form a band, and they even performed under the name Guess.

From their early days, the band built a small cult following, including also some already established acts such as Chemical Brothers, Travis, and Ed Harcourt, the latter being influencial into their singing to Heavenly Records (in stead of Rough Trade). The band’s rise came swiftly, starting in Summer 2004 and later that year when they began supporting the likes of Travis, Ed Harcourt, and Snow Patrol and appearing on the bills of some of the UK’s smaller festivals. The band had its recorded debut in the form of the limited edition 7-inch single “Hymn For Her”, released in November 2004 to coincide with their 3-show residency at London’s The Borderline. In early 2005 they released their first commercially available single Forever Lost, and on the back of that played a sold-out show to a crowd of over 2,000 enthousiastic people at The Forum in Kentish Town, London? The self-titled debut album came in June 2005, and saw 3 more singles culled from it. The album itself made it  to the #17 position in the UK Album Charts. The band got extra press attention when they, as the first to ever do that, walked off the stage at popular music tv show Top Of The Pops after being announced as “a fat melting pot of talent” at the occasion of the presentation of their Love Me Like You single. The band members, all of heavy build, apparently took this as an offence to their physiques. Other sources speculate that the band didn’t really like the show’s policy of lip-sinching, rather  than anything else. The self-titled debut album was shortlisted in 2005 for the much-wanted Mercury Music Prize.

Following heavy touring and promoting their first album (they went throughout the US and UK, across Europe, and even spent time in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan), TMN returned with sophomore album Those The Brokes in Autumn 2006. It fared even better, reaching #11 in UK’s Album Charts, but only saw two singles culled from it. Over the years, members from TMN have made appearances on several other artists’ recordings, including Duke Special (contributed vocals to a song), The Chemical Brothers (vocals to a songs), The Concretes (vocals to one, backing vocals to another song), Ed Harcourt (backing vocals to a song), David Kitt (backing vocals to 2 songs), Jane Birkin, and The Boxer Rebellion (backing vocals by Angela on one song). Since their sophomore album, the band’s also released the EP Undecided in September 2007, but since then things on the release front have been pretty quiet around the four.

This being my introduction to the band, I was somewhat surprised with the fact they’re called an Indie Rock band…because listening to the album I didn’t exactly find much “Rock” in their music! Now if the term “Indie Pop” had been used, I wouldn’t have started to listen to the album with quite different expectations. As things stand, you get nice easy-listening music with vocals to match. For the most part the female vocals are very nice backings, but they do occasionally come to the fore more prominently and in the case of the track “Throwing My Heart” the girls take over completely, making for a nice alternate track in the middle of the album. The album is ended somewhat weirdly, with a hidden track following the song “I’m Sorry”. What you get is a 4:4/ instrumental with classical instrumentation, and towards the end there’s even a short fade out with a 90-second “reprise”…weird! To find out whether you like TMN material, check out what’s posted at myspace.com/themagicnumbers (off the new album there’s only the opening tracks, but you dó get 3 songs off the other albums as well).

80/100

Tony.