Interpol, Temples, Royal Blood and Circa Waves form the line-up for NME Awards Tour 2014
The NME Awards Tour once again sports a four band line-up for 2014: suit-loving New Yorkers Interpol, psychedelic fetishists Temples, noise rock two-piece Royal Blood and Scouse garage rockers Circa Waves. Or as the eye-rolling cynic might comment, ‘the already established one, the celebrity endorsed one, the one you’ve never even heard of and the ones NME are calling the saviours of guitar music... again’. On a serious note, while the tour’s a good opportunity for upcoming talent to showcase their wares, some have fallen out of love with the publication behind it all – or specifically, can’t forgive the NME for such provocative oversights as publishing a 'Top 500 Songs Of All Time' list earlier this month whose top 10 includes Arctic Monkeys but not The Beatles.
[This could possibly have had something to do with the unavailability of Beatles tracks on Spotify – NME's allegedly exhaustive playlist ('the 500 greatest songs of all time in one handy Spotify playlist') is 483 tracks long, which would account for the 15 missing Beatles tracks, plus two others we couldn't be bothered to look for – Spotify ed.]
Circa Waves deserve your sympathy though – they’re a pleasantly listenable and competent, if unremarkable, guitar-led indie rock band from Liverpool. They have the dubious honour of unqualifiedly flying the flag for the rock revolution just as Palma Violets, Tribes and The Vaccines did before them. Poor guys. Interpol are good though.
Interpol, Temples, Royal Blood and Circa Waves play the 02 Academy, Glasgow, Tue 18 Mar.