3 Blind Mice
3BM (2002)

review by: Stephan Finch
Date: 5/7/03

I recently got a demo from a band called 3 Blind Mice that's worth writing about. I've been sitting here for a half hour struggling to figure out exactly how to describe the sound, which is quite daring. I've just hit on the perfect adjective: gay.

No, no, not gay as in Perrier or Will & Grace gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I mean gay, as in happy gay. Springy little toe-tapping beats. Jolly acoustic guitars. Lots of harmonious singing. It's like Abba meets the Pet Shop Boys. And it leaves one feeling, well, gay.

3 Blind Mice is based in London and consists of three singers, Alex Grayson, Garry Wonfor and Lyndon J. Connah, who apparently have been working quite successfully as session and touring musicians for well-established acts. They've worked for Julian Cope, George Michael, Thomas Dolby – the list is impressive. And their singing is too. This six-tune demo they sent me is overrun with silky three-part harmony.

Of course, the word "gay," has become supercharged because nobody uses it to mean what it originally did. (If you're straight, you can confirm this by proclaiming to a gathering of your friends at the bar that you're "feeling rather gay tonight.") Similarly, pop music that's meant to make you feel happy is such an anachronism, to hear 3 Blind Mice with their happy little sound is…radical in its own way.

Full disclosure: I'm not a huge fan of happy rock. I'm a guy who couldn't get in with the crowd and sought solace with The Who and The Clash and the Pixies. And I used to bitch about how mainstream radio was always siding with the shiny happy people. Then came Nirvana. Our profoundly disaffected voices were being heard.

But even I can see that now "disaffected" has become ridiculously mainstream. The current rage in rock radio is well orchestrated distortion. Gravelly voiced front-men shout and croon about disaffection over banks of chunky-sounding Marshall-amplified guitars and drums that have been electronically enhanced to sound like a half-dozen slamming doors. But it's so very unlike the bands that pioneered the punk – the Buzzcocks, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Alice in Chains and many others. The current generation – I'm thinking of Staind, Linkin Park, POD – have precious little interest in pioneering anything. They've sanded the edges of the original sound so it's as smooth as a skateboard half-pipe. They've replaced the otherworldly themes and lyrics with repetitive, meaningless anthem-like slogans, and everybody has prettied themselves up for the MTV beach house. They're the hair bands of the new millennium.

Seems only natural, then, that the real pioneers would look into happy rock. I have no idea if 3 Blind Mice will ever make it into big-time radio. But hearing their toe-tapping little ditties makes me feel, well, not only a little gay, but a little hopeful.