Thursday 13 January 2011

New Band: Walter Mitty & his Makeshift Orchestra

Walter Mitty... make ultra-lofi bedroom songs, but unlike a lot of stuff in that grouping their stuff is genuinely charming and also pretty catchy. The lyrics are mostly about things like letting friends vomit on floors, and they make heavy use of a kazoo - and it's as brilliant as that sounds. They deserve far more than the 34 (34!!!) listeners they currently have on last.fm, and to have better gigs coming up than just what appears from their website to be a week of busking in Portland - some of their songs are easily as good as modern american lo-fi king Adam Green, for example. They've got a couple of EPs for free download on Bandcamp - the better of the two is at this link.

As an illustration of how fun this band is, here's a live video of a mass-singalong they inspired during a gig at a donut shop. God, I wish stuff like this happened in this country. Can you imagine any current British indiepop/lo-fi bands doing this? Not at all.

1 comment:

  1. It's pretty rare here too. Being a LA native concert goer, I'm used to people half listening, half talking through sets maybe mustering the courage to nod along a little through a song, but a walter mitty show is an undeniable, delightful force. Unless you're going to a throw back 90's ska show it's still a treat out here to see a band emote so much uninhibited energy of it's fans...it's special. Also, aside from being an amaing band, I think these kids have a lot of friends.

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