As anyone who's ever received an e-mail from me in the last 12 years could tell you, I loved Kenickie. And, as this post explained a bit roughly, the kenixfan e-mail addy is a paraphrase of a Kenickie flipside (from their single, "Nightlife"), and not a paean to actress Kenix Kwok.
So, as a Kenickie fan, and simply as a fan of good British tunes, I'm happy to share with you some MP3s to download from new band, Frankie and The Heartstrings, featuring Pete from Kenickie (back then he was known as Johnny X).
Side note: You should also check out Pete's solo incarnation as George Washington Brown. Catbird Records released an EP earlier this Spring and you can buy it as a download for only $3 here.
Frankie and The Heartstrings, like Kenickie and even the Arctic Monkeys on their early releases, have distinct influences which you can hear at first listen.
However, that's not an insult as, like Kenickie and the Monkeys, Frankie and The Heartstrings have already managed to turn those influences into something unique.
A song like "Hunger" may sound a tiny bit like Dexy's Midnight Runners -- or even classic single "Just Got Lucky" by JoBoxers -- but it has an earnestness that makes it much more than just a set of empty references to another era.
And "What Goes Around" opens with a keyboard figure that makes me think of Pulp's "Pink Glove", but the song quickly kicks into something closer to an exuberantly upbeat rewrite of Josef K's "Endless Soul".
As I said to someone dismissive of the Pipettes based upon their stage-show and look, the songs work with or without all that stuff; you can enjoy the songs even if you don't know the antecedents but, if you do, you might appreciate them even more as they are mixed into something fresh for modern listeners.
It's the same here, clearly; these are cracking good tunes.
At the moment, the band are unsigned but playing a ton of gigs in England.
*UPDATED* (with fixed links)
You can download "Hunger" here.
You can download "Tender is the Night" here.
You can download "What Goes Around" here.
Check out the band's MySpace page and on Twitter as well.