Look away now, if you've read many of the reviews on this site. Yes, it's another rant at the music industry. There really is no reason for a band like Razorlight to exist. Record companies fall over each other to sign bands that sound like the latest trend (in this case The Strokes), in the hope of cashing in and making money out of similar bands. What they still fail to realise, is that by this point the market is saturated, and only the really good, original bands will have a chance at making any money. Surely a good business sense would be to find something else that is completely different, but still interesting, and pour the money into promoting something new?
Luckily, at least this is what seems to have happened with Hope of the States. Celebrating the recording of their first Top of the Pops appearance, they are at odds with the type of music you expect in the Top 40. They are too good to belong there. First their songs seem to sound like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, if they had indie-ish vocals, but slightly worryingly the lead singer sounds a bit like James from Starsailor. But when they get going, into the climaxes of their songs, they are much better than anything in the charts at the moment. In the encore, there was a cover of Mad World, which seems to sum up the success of the band. Donnie Darko, the film where the song was featured, was a surprise success of this year, tapping into a market of viewers that had been generally forgotten by major film companies. In a similar way, Hope of the States are making intelligent music, attracting an audience who would usually ignore anything that was hyped by the NME.