VV Good

It's often said – usually in defence of bands hawking a sound that's woefully outdated – that there's nothing new under the sun. All seams have been mined, all avenues explored, and all there is left to do is write new songs which sound like the old ones.

This is nonsense, of course, but it does raise several questions, one being: if you really are in love with the style of a bygone age, is there any way of making music that doesn't sound like pointless karaoke or hollow pastiche?

London rock 'n' roll quartet Vincent Vincent and the Villains have had plenty of time to prepare their answer. Over the past four years they've released a handful of singles and built up a loyal following through their live shows, as well as losing Vincent's co-frontman Charlie Waller when he left to concentrate on his other band, the Rumble Strips.

Now their debut's finally ready – 'It's like a greatest hits from the past four years,' Vincent says – and a love of 1950s popular music shines out of it. Indeed, Killing Time namechecks Roy Orbison alongside doo-wop groups the Flamingos and the Rays in its celebration of the joy of simply spending an afternoon lazing around, playing records and smoking. But the album's more than just a homage or a
period piece.

Sure, there are plenty of old-fashioned signifiers, from the
flamenco-styled guitar licks on "Beast" to the perfect vocal harmonies on "Sweet Girlfriend" and "Blue Boy". But there's a knowing edge to proceedings which belongs firmly in the post-everything 21st century, best shown off in "Cinema", a misanthropic lament by a "nicotine-dependent cinema attendant" that could apply to any low-paid Odeon worker of the last fifty years. Or the references in "Pretty Girl" to seeing the object of your desire while you're out shopping in
Tesco.

Then there's Vincent's voice. It's a fabulously versatile instrument – crooning, yelping, barking, yodelling, prowling ominously, melancholic or melodramatic when it has to be, at times recalling Television's Tom Verlaine as much as any icon of the rock 'n' roll era.