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Writer's pictureAndy Wors

Small Boy (Norway) - 'Doing Alright' (single)


So we appeared to have a short but quite chronic technical issue yesterday, probably caused by me trying to fix a minor technical issue and making things a whole lot worse. It reminds me of the Douglas Adams quote that if you ‘try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat’.


Anyway sorry about that and just to be clear, I wasn’t actually trying to take apart my cat, and please don’t take yours apart to show you can do a better job than me.


I hope Small Boy don’t mind me using up some of their valuable feature space for NMR public service announcements, but they seem like a good bunch judging from their social media pages, even quoting Douglas Adams themselves at one point. They’re a new band and either a 2 piece (according to their Bandcamp page) or a 5 piece (according to Facebook) so let’s take an average and say there’s 3.5 of them, and they play fluid sounding indie rock, with a healthy dose of 80s influences. I say healthy, because too much can just throw everything into a time warp, and it doesn’t sound like that I promise.


Their new track is entitled ‘Doing Alright’ and it’s an upbeat song telling us that everything is going to be okay, which is hugely reassuring, about time too and I’m very grateful to them for telling me. This is what they have to say on the matter. “If you think everyone hates you, go to sleep. If you think you hate everyone, have something to eat. You're Doing Alright, remember that. A song with a social democrat singing about your unfulfilled dreams, and how everything will work out as long as you do your part."


Good, so remember to eat your greens, vote and feed your neighbours cat when they’re on vacation and one day you’ll be island hopping around the Pacific Ocean.


Anyway this is well written, mature melodic indie music, and it’s the vocals that probably remind me of the 80s a little, but they’re authoritative sounding and the 3.5 band members knit together really seamlessly, as if they’ve been playing together for years. Not exactly hard hitting but nice. Mostly harmless.

'Doing Alright' is taken from their forthcoming EP, and is a follow up to their equally good debut single 'Bobby Go Home' - more social messages on this one, apparently it's about how to get your act together after 'peeing on your smartphone after a night out'.

Night out? Now we're really dreaming.


Find them on Instagram, Facebook and Bandcamp.

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