Tim: Most X Factor acts leave the competition and aren’t heard from again until a good six months down the line, around about the time everybody’s just about to realise that the obligatory “I’ll keep making music, you’ve not heard the last of me” was, as ever, utter balls. Not Kingsland Road, though, who got kicked off in week 5 and have already posted a Christmas track to sustain our interest. I’d get annoyed about it being a quick and dirty cash-in, but firstly they’re giving it away for free, and secondly…
Tim: …it’s actually really rather good.
Tom: It’s… it’s not. It’s really not.
Tim: What? It’s got Christmas stamped all over it, and beyond that it’s partly a love letter to Katy Perry, and partly a “welcome to us” track, and while I’d normally say to a band “look, keep this stuff for a blog post, put out some good music”, this actually is very enjoyable.
Tom: No. It’s not. All those lyrics are terrible. Knockers. Farting. It’s like a group of really immature teenagers got together and tried to… huh. Actually, that makes sense.
Tim: See, I think the lyrics tread a (very) fine line between clever and annoying, but for me at least they just about overall stay on the right side, mostly because not only is it almost certainly the first song to base its initial premise on an iPhone’s Location Services but also the first I know of to directly reference a current advert campaign. The only thing I’m not keen on are the weird call backs later in the song, but they do have a slight charm to them, maybe.
Tom: It barely worked for the Beatles in Yellow Submarine. It certainly doesn’t work here.
Tim: Hmm. I don’t know. It’s a very enjoyable track, though – that much is clear.
Tom: It actively wound me up. It made me significantly less Christmassy. I had to go listen to Underneath the Tree again to get me back in the mood.
Tim: Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, then. Well, there’s a video as well, compiled from a mix of X Factor footage, grainy concert footage and animated GIFs; it takes away most of what subtlety remains (for example, I’d somehow missed the line about Katy’s knockers, and I’d not noted that the passing gas is actually about one of the band members), but it brought a smile to my face.
Tom: It’s like the very worst of fan-videos. I’d ask how their publicist allowed this, but I’m not sure they have one any more.
Tim: Basically, I like this track a lot, and it almost makes me glad that they got kicked off early because if they’d stayed in too much longer we wouldn’t have this. So good.
Tim: So awful.