Named after the undertaker in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, Evans the Death's first steps took place when Dan and Katherine met each other at a gig a couple of years ago, but it was only after recruiting Dan's schoolfriends Matt and Rob, and younger brother Olly, that Evans the Death began playing the kind of shows that made both them and their audiences sit up and take notice.
Having evidently spent a good proportion of their young lives attuned as much to the lyrical dexterity of Morrissey, Lawrence Felt, Edwyn Collins, and Jarvis Cocker, as to the scuzzed up melodic exuberance of early My Bloody Valentine, Pavement, The Pixies, and the I Am Kurious Oranj era of The Fall, the band effortlessly blend precocious musical literacy with the kind of unerring self-awareness which makes for a perfectly pitched pop sensibility.
Their imminent first release, latent-cold-war-paranoia love-song 'Threads', produced by Rory Bratwell (Test Icicles/RAT:ATT:AGG/Kasms), is as urgent, unsettling, and hook-laden a calling card as could be wished for.
Elegantly handled self-deprecation, mordant wit and a willingness to embrace your own awkwardness go a long way when you have th sophisticated grasp on the things that make music exhilarating, nervy, and vital which Evans the Death manifestly do. With their compellingly unhinged and hyper-intelligent pop the band look set to blaze a trail through 2011 and beyond.
