When some bright spark coined the term ‘indie landfill’, a generation of working-class bands were replaced overnight by bloodless Coldplay clones and Mercury wannabes.
That’s one explanation for the hard road that Harrow’s 12 Dirty Bullets still find themselves on, four years after Downsides To Making A Living introduced them and their caustically truthful singer-songwriter Jamie Jamieson. She Could Love You Forever sums up their strengths, all tender emotion, messy situations and pinballing, unexpected lyrics from Jamieson’s quicksilver yet earthy mind.
‘I don’t believe in love/I’m like my mother I believe in drugs’ is the sort of home truth blurted in these songs’ rough and tumble. Wander My Way Home is a fond memoir of teenage life in the hard-knock suburbs, Springsteen minus the bluster, while Motown’s ballsy guitar anthem shows the band’s other strength. ‘I said, hush your mouth, this is my city,’ Jamieson sings. It still could be.
