Review Music: The Rogues | Topman | The Macbeth

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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with RóISíN GADELRAB
Published: 19 March 2009

HARROW beauties Rogues lived up to the hype at the Levi’s Ones to Watch launch of their single Not So Pretty at the Macbeth in Hoxton last week.

Rogues live up to the hype

Rogues
The Macbeth

SOME otherwise sane people are convinced there’s a factory somewhere, possibly run by Topman’s marketing department, making robot indie bands.
Sharp haircuts, skinny-fit jeans, Kooks-y kookiness, impossibly good-looking – does this all happen by chance, they argue?
These people are clearly mad, but Rogues are the sort of thing that they point to as proof of What’s Really Happening.
They’re skinny, attractive (one is the spit of Alex James); the guitarists have a bit of a Pete/Karl Libertines thing onstage, only before it all went messy; they have a keyboard player as well (you’re not actually allowed to play in Hoxton any more without one); they manage to wear clothes that make other people look like desperate posers, etc.
In short, you could easily write them off as more identikit idols, especially if you were feeling grumpy because they seemed to have kept the crowd waiting for quite a while.
But by about the third song you get some idea why Rogues are officially a Buzz Band and appearing on the Levi’s Ones To Watch circuit (and why Kate Nash was among those who crammed into The Macbeth). There’s some catchy music here, which manage to happily cross-breed electro with indie guitar.
They seem like lovely people too – abandoning aloofness to wish “happy birthday” to their little brother in the crowd.
This was the launch of their single Not So Pretty, a nice enough song being sold very winningly by their manager and his girlfriend by the door. Time will tell if they have enough going on to rise above the robots.
ALAN STAFFORD

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