Pull Tiger Tail: Mr 100 Percent

Bands, eh? Buy ’em a leather jacket and an electric guitar and nine times out of 10 they’ll be convinced they’re Mick’n’Keef’n’Liam’n’ Noel’n’Carl’n’Pete rolled into one when, ideas-wise, they’re still more Lou’n’Andy. Write a song with more than two chords in it and they’ll expect Krug for the night bus and a five-album deal dusted by the morning.

And then there’s Pull Tiger Tail. The name? From a band road trip across America conducted as an ‘imaginary tour’. Their MySpace? Home to a so-cute-it-hurts footage of a monkey taunting a baby tiger and a home video to rival OK Go for choreography. Influences? Put a gun to their heads and they’ll admit to Toto, Cat Stevens and Tool. All of which means you half expect ‘Mr 100 Percent’ to be the sound of Mastodon produced by David Gest and that weird bloke out of Circulus. Yet, hot on the heels of the pulverising ‘Animator’, this download only single shows they mean major chart business in 2007. “I sleep on my feet/It still isn’t good enough for them/Why do I keep up with the pretence?” gasps singer Marcus while guitars twist and churn like Bloc Party stuck in a lift with The Automatic. Meanwhile, drummer Jack and bassist Davo do their rhythmic best to kill Boy Kill Boy’s career stone dead.

Like Klaxons and The Horrors, PTP are riddled with self doubt, effortlessly tuneful and set to explode the Ideas Factory sky high in 2007. Watch it burn.