One of our running jokes is that we could probably start a (very strange) band out of the English studies department - we have a lot of people who are/have been in bands! For instance, I just found out that my two supervisors were in a punk band together for a while. To be honest, it's not hard to know people in bands here - almost everyone's in one (or two or three!)

Anyway, whenever someone in the department has a gig, we all usually try to go. Tonight my friend Alan had a gig. We love Alan, he wears Christmas sweaters year-round and spends lots of time staring blankly at the wall looking thoughtful instead of working. Here is his band; he's the singer & guitarist in the video. He sounds nothing like this in real life.


Basically, I had no idea who would follow Alan's melodic indie-folk-in-Christmas-sweaters music, but when Standard Hipsters practically clipped from an American Apparel ad started setting up I had moderately low expectations. They turned out to be this amazing postrock band. I should point out that Mogwai is from Glasgow, so we've got a bit of a postrock tradition here.

I really like postrock but it's difficult to pull it off correctly without being too heavy-handed or contrived. I don't really know how to describe Last Lungs, but you can stream their whole album here.