Send "Bombay Bicycle Club " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 It's incredibly easy to say "forget everything you know about Bombay Bicycle Club," when they really haven't established much of an identity to begin with. But I'll try to sum it up: If you've ever wondered what might happen if Editors were fronted by a freak-folk singer, by all means pick up their debut. Meanwhile, on last year's mostly acoustic soft parade Flaws, they sounded like they'd get their lunch money stolen by Kings of Convenience. I suppose their sales inspired more patience from Island than their art, but on A Different Kind of Fix, they follow in the proud tradition of Snow Patrol's Final Straw and Travis' The Man Who, wherein a band links up with a hotshot producer, ditches a trad-indie sound that just wasn't working, and discovers its destiny churning out soft-serve sweetness that completely neutralizes your critical reasoning skills. I'm fairly certain the same impulse that triggers my desire for an Oreo McFlurry makes me want to listen to A Different Kind of Fix.It's more likely that Bombay Bicycle Club sought out producer Ben H. Allen than the other way around-- after all, BBC have dutifully namedropped Allen clients Animal Collective and Deerhunter as big influences leading up to the release of Fix. Yeah, it's 2011 and just discovering those bands is just another aspect of BBC that seems so easy to make fun of before they totally disarm you: While nothing here will make you say, "yeah, total 'Summertime Clothes' moment," they've opted out of "quiet is the new loud" by investing themselves in the elemental songwriting aspects of America's indie elite: repetition is the new chorus, texture is the new volume. And indeed, Apple might need to take a long look at Allen as a product designer if they haven't found a worthy successor for Steve Jobs-- as with Merriweather Post Pavilion, Halcyon Digest, and especially Washed Out's Within and Without, Allen gets a sound that's sleek, bold, and covetable, yet within the price range of the young and upwardly mobile. The easy lilt of Jack Steadman's vocals (thankfully shorn of his prior melismatic fringe) gives Fix enough humanity and extroverted charm to keep it from being a mere showcase for Allen's production tricks, but the depth of the low-end and a prudent amount of abrasive grit imparts a three-dimensionality that saves BBC from getting pushed around like any band that could reasonably be compared to early Coldplay....full text |
| Bbc |
| It’s okay if you’re a little irritating if you’re also annoyingly good. Bombay Bicycle Club, young and fey when they pedalled onto the scene four years ago and now looking even younger and acting even more feyly, may still not be embraced by those who feel the post-Belle and Sebastian school of anti-rock merits a good slap rather than a hug and an exclamation of "aw, bless", but it’s getting increasingly difficult to deny their talent. Yes, they’ve been given more encouragement, nurturing and backing than most bands receive in a lifetime, but they’ve now released three albums of bravely different styles. Their debut was dynamic indie-pop, while top-10 follow-up Flaws lurched across to soft folk territory with a perversity that only seemed opportunistic with hindsight. Now, thankfully electing not to go the full Mumford, they return with something that’s beautifully hard to categorise. A bit Italian house, a bit Animal Collective (Ben Allen is among the producers, as is 21st century tyro Jim Abbiss), a bit Talking Heads and a lot flush with giddy enthusiasm and sunshine, it’s very indie and very fey – but in a good way. Lead single Shuffle provides pretty much a microcosm of the album’s feel. Building a gentle, hooky pop song over a looping, dance-inducing piano sample, it’s, like all the best late-summer sounds, 75% exuberant and 25% melancholy. What You Want and Bad Timing waft in on similar breezes, but with less definition, more ambivalence. Lights Out, Words Gone is as close as they come to the realms of the epic, fostering a stabby white-funk riff until it blows off science (they’re warmer than Foals) and stumbles happily onto something not a million miles away from soul....full text |
| Guardian |
| Perhaps it's their tender years or that grating name that's allowed Bombay Bicycle Club to be unfairly dismissed as fey, jangly music for teenage mix tapes. Their third album has those qualities, but it's also full of exquisite moments. Animal Collective producer Ben Allen has ushered in a more textured sound via loops and layered vocals which find consonance with the querulous-voiced Jack Steadman. The album has a tentative quality which is sometimes beguiling – the gently grooving "Lights Out, Words Gone", effete and insistent all at once, is a delight – but often they sound in need of more conviction....full text |
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