Riding High - Bombay Bicycle Club

Impossibly young North London five piece Bombay Bicycle Club are markedly different from most new bands. Speaking to Gigwise on a lovely spring day, it’s clear that their origins don’t begin with their undying thirst to create music and hence form a band. Somewhat beguiling, instead they tell us that they formed because "the heads of year at our school asked us to do an assembly" and "the stuff we were hearing on the radio and in the NME was kind of shit." Such humble beginnings makes it a tad surprising that four lads barely out the G.C.S.E examination room write such reflective, melodic lines about life and love, with such radiant brilliance.
 
Now, BBC are doing things their way. Having already released their first E.P. 'The Boy I Used To Be' on their own label 'Mmm... Records' purely because they felt that, as lead singer Jack Steadman puts it, "there's not much point doing anything else until we can commit to something like a record deal", on top of this they’ve been offered the help of prestigious producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian fame) to get behind the desk and make it happen after he heard them live.

As all this was happening to BBC, after playing to "about 10 people the week before", they played to a several thousand strong audience and got the all sacred exposure bands can only dream of after beating off the likes of The Holloway's to win the Road to V festival. "The V festival was probably the funnest thing we've ever done" says Suren, BBC's resident drummer and chanter, "We thought it was a joke when we first heard we were through to the finals, and then suddenly we were through to the last four, so it was all a massive shock to us". Surely, you ask? These lads’ heads cannot be anywhere near the ground they walk on? What's their poison?  The shadowy, bourgeois haunts of London? Hallucinogenics? Peaches Geldof? "We're not very rock and roll to be honest, our parents bring our gear to our gigs and stuff, we can’t even drive."

No, fraid not, instead BBC are going against the grain of publicity fuelled fights (though a "friendly rivalry" with indie starlings and classmates Cajun Dance Party is on the go) and model dating to remain level headed. They shun the very thought of quitting the classroom and living a life of heady excesses, because, as Jack says, "it would probably harm the growing of the band."