Lopez Blogs

THEZAPPING ALBUM REVIEW:

~ The Loungs, We Are The Champ:

It’s been almost a year since The Loungs arrived with horns blaring on their essential debut single I’m Gonna Take Your Girl. Despite the apparent lack of activity, St. Helen’s answer to the Hair Bear Bunch have, in fact been channelling their boundless energy into the recording of corking debut album We Are The Champs. And what an album it is – music filled with colour and sunshine, peppered with trumpets, time changes, made up words and catchy singalong choruses. New single Armageddon Outta Here is a handclapping, head bobbing slice of pop perfection – an exercise in simplicity packed with trumpets, glockenspiel, guitars and an incongruous string arrangement. It’s I Will Survive for dudes! I’m Gonna Take Your Girl is a stomping call to arms for the romantically overlooked and Get Along reads a line between dream like floatiness and demented sea shanty. Dig That Do ponders mental health and women’s hairdressing with Vaudevillian gusto and All Your Love flits from waltz time to party time in the blink of an eye. It’s a fine ambitious and fully realised debut and one that I am going to be playing a lot over the summer...

LINK: The Loungs Official Website

THEZAPPING CHATS WITH THE LOUNGS:

1 - can you start off by telling us how you got into the music industry?

We haven't yet really. We are still dipping our toes in the shallow end and still deciding if we agree with the feel of the water lapping at our 60 collective hairy tootsies.

2 - how important is it for you to write your own stuff? If a great song was offered to you (a la Can't Get You Out Of My Head was offered to Kylie) would you do it?

No. It's pointless. Collaborations would be OK but with 6 of us it's already a collaboration so we'd tell em to pass it on. Unless it was somebody that we loved and then we would con them into letting us record the song, never actually release it and just play it at secret parties and family dos. We struggle getting 6 fat lads onto one stage at the moment as it is without letting anybody else up there to steal our limelight. Whoever it was they would have to stand at the back and they probably would'nt like that.

3 - Which act around at the moment do you think has "it" - you know the songs, the live set, the energy - and who would you aspire to be like

There's not much around at the moment that we all agree on music wise. We would however like to be 6 David Bowies, each at different stages of his career with a big face off for who gets the Goblin King tights from Labyrinth.

4 - Live Lounge on radio one is one of my fave shows where current acts cover songs they wouldn't normally do. What current pop song would you cover if you went on and how would you change it?

We quite fancy having a go at the UK Eurovision's entrant Scooch. We think we could definitely do justice to their colourful stage costumes and not only would we welcome having a set of backing singers off stage in order to pep up our performance, we would actively encourage it. So Scooch it would be...but even camper!

5 - For me image, fashion and pop all seem to go hand in hand - for better or worse. How important is the outfit to you?

About as important as the price of bread in Iceland. If you've got 5 haircuts on one head then you are in trouble and should be asked to leave the band immediately. Any reoccuring themes within The Loungs involving headwear, beards, unkempt heads of hair and the like are purely the product of laziness and unresolved personal hygene issues.

6 - What can people going to see you live expect

Gigs are for getting drunk and having a laugh, not chinstroking, so we pretty much only play upbeat poppy stuff. A nightmare gig is a bunch of people stood with arms folded who politely clap between songs. If you want to have a little dance, a bit of a singalong and a good time before you have to go home to prepare for work the next morning then come and see us because we'll be doing the same and you can be in our club. Come down to one of our album or single launches and you might get a free badge. You can't say fairer than that surely.

7 - what do you think of celeb reality shows like Dancing On Ice, Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity? Do any appeal?

They're shit. It's Dragon's Den all the way when it comes to 'reality' TV. However this does'nt mean that you won't be seeing 'Living with The Loungs' at some point in the future. On Channel 5. After the watershed.

8 - How hard was it choosing the songs for the album - are there any that got left off that you felt was a little like leaving a child at the orphanage

It was fairly straightforward really. As soon as we started to think about the album the songs that are contained immediately lent themselves to inclusion. Other old favourites, new songs etc. were left off not because of their quality but because they did'nt quite fit into the tracklisting and feel of the songs that we had decided upon. We're in this for the long haul so we did'nt see the need to pile everything we had onto the album in case we never get the chance to make another. All our 'little children' will see the light of day at some point, they just have to wait their turn.

9 - Most embarrassing record in your collection?

Non of us own any embarrassing ones. They're all good from Abba through to the Wu-Tang Clan. You should know if something is worth buying in the first place, espacially nowadays with the internet at your disposal to try before you buy. You can go through each of our collections with a fine tooth comb and still find nothing of disrepute. Honestly.

10 - What do you do when you are "off duty" - films, tv, reading, socialising etc.

NTL buys rogue and often worrying items off ebay and the rest of us plead with him to send them back. We are all big fans of films, some of us can read and if by socialising you mean going to the pub first thing on Monday morning and getting back home at some point on a Thursday afternoon then yes, we like a bit of that too.

11 - you are taking thezapping out on a night on the town. What can i expect

A typical Loungs night out would start with a local coffee house in which we would discuss the days newspapers, politics and literature before each presenting a piece of poetry that we had been working on since last week's meeting. Then maybe onto the theatre and later to a nice restaraunt to discuss the show that we had just seen. OR we could pool our money, go to Bargain Booze, find somebody willing to let us into their house, get drunk, laugh at each other and listen to music until the early hours. The choice is yours.

12 - rather randomly, what would your stag night prank on a pal be??

We'd kill him, then take his corpse to the wedding and act out a big charade full off belly-laughs ala Weekend at Bernies.

13 - where do you see yourself in one years time?

We will almost certainly still be alive we would like to think. We should also be knee deep in the recording of our second album with a healthy set of gigs, exeriences and new fans under our belts.

14 - anything else you want to discuss??

Just to plug our lovely set of websites www.theloungs.co.uk, www.myspace.com/theloungs and www.myspace.com/wearethechamp. Come and see us at one of our gigs and see what you think and definitley treat yourself to a copy of our debut album WE ARE THE CHAMP which is released on Akoustik Anarkhy Recordings on 7th May 2007.

Album Launch Events:

· May 18^th – The Citadel, St Helens

· May 19^th – Brixton Windmill, London