Liam Gallagher sneezes and it’s a full page news spread! Who cares?” complains Latitude Blue front man Gareth Nutter. “There are plenty of bands who are about making good music and writing good lyrics, so let them show what they can do.”<br>
Nutter’s complaints may seem like the usual bellyaches of small bands, but he has a heck of a point. Just last week, The New Musical Express broke the story that Liam’s brother and band mate was under criminal investigation for, seriously now, walking on railroad tracks. If that’s the top news a nation’s major music rag can drag up, then maybe it’s time to openly write off the products of the British music scene and start sucking up to the New York bands on a full-time basis. Throw in the coverage of the either stupendously ironic or irritatingly stupid Darkness, and it’s enough to make even the most skilled bedroom guitar master pack the six-string away and pursue a career as a chump DJ.

Fortunately the British rock scene isn’t the junkyard of Oasis wannabes, glam-metal goofs and other burned-out rockers, as Latitude Blue’s debut EP, Searching for Perfect (2003, Bleeding Music) proves there’s a glimmer, nay a blazing beacon, of hope for the British underground – if only someone would clue the majority of the country in on the secret. Bassist Phil Harmer, guitarist Neil Mercer and drummer Matt Bateman join Nutter for a four-song EP that should serve as a wakeup call to the British pop scene. Building from a shimmering glaze of melodies gleaned from everything from Britpop to ’80s and ’90s alternative and new wave acts, the act looks across the Atlantic for inspiration in today’s post-hardcore scene. The result is a sound with the sleek, vigorous melodies of post-emo popsters with neither the crestfallen, defeatist fatalism of lost-cause romances nor the perpetually annoying air of hipster self-righteousness that come with such a style for 95 percent of Yankee acts with a similar lineage.

That sense of distance – both from the clingy confines of an American underground overrun with wannabes trading credibility for fashion sense and the driving forces of British rock – is the source of Latitude Blue’s charms. In an almost obvious irony, it’s also the biggest obstacle to stand in the band’s path. Although it bears traces of the gooey melodies and out-of-focus guitars taught by American emo acts, nobody – including spazzing NME columnists, and emo-hungry radio presenters – will confuse Latitude Blue with its emo counterparts. For Nutter, that’s much more of a blessing than a curse.......

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