Klaxons: Magick

Were you fortunate enough to be a member of Klaxons right now, you might, in the rare moments when you weren’t gobbling Haçienda-strength ecstasy, start to feel slightly apprehensive about the future. “Sure,” you might think, “getting dubbed the leaders of this new rave malarkey is great and all that, but being as the original rave was good for about 12 months (then got ransacked by faux-spiritual posh hippies), and that nowadays things move about 500 times as fast as they did back then (see the Arctic Monkeys’ recent “demise”), I make it that we’ve got about, oooh… 0.125 of our 15 minutes before we’re off to the great movement dustbin in the sky?”

You might think this, but luckily, the actual Klaxons are well aware that, stripped of the fluorescent clothes, “Top one! Nice one! Get Sorted!” headlines (see above) and surrounding scene of lesser bands, they would still be the best, cleverest, most melodically sophisticated and sussed British pop group in years. And that first-single-on-a-big-label ‘Magick’ (despite only being about their sixth best song) would sound just as great in a musical landscape where fiddle-led speed-metal was en vogue as it does in the current climate. Laden with literally dozens of hooks – both chaotic-yet-perfectly-arranged and stupid-yet-deceptively-clever – it’s another perfect synthesis of guitars and ’avin’ it attitude; an instant, trashy, dance-punk classic that will propel them into their rightful home: the upper regions of the hit parade.

Oh, and it sounds loads better when you’re on lots and lots of drugs. Allegedly.