Live Review: MIAMIGO ‘What I Want’ / ‘Last Summer’
The exotic MIAMIGO have sprung up out of nowhere. They’ve come from a year long hiatus to present us with a pair of tracks, 'What I Want' and 'Last Summer'.
The faintly exotic sounding MIAMIGO have sprung up out of nowhere. Well, they sprung up out of Brighton, but figuratively speaking they’ve come from the dark depths of Internet nothingness (really just a year long hiatus) to present us with a pair of punchy synth pop tracks, 'What I Want' and 'Last Summer'.
Because you can’t deny this is pop, it’s just cleverly dressed up by rocker boys in black leather. They probably have tats too. And certainly have a haircut your mother wouldn’t approve of.
‘What I Want’ is cocksure and aspirational as the lead singer opens with the mission statement: ‘I wanna be better off than anybody that I know’. In the staccato guitar riffs and heavy drums we hear faint hints of Slum Sociable, City Calm Down or Vitamin, and vocally it sounds quite a lot like Alex Turner.
Plug into the latest music with our FREE weekly newsletter
MIAMIGO are very different in style and sound than fellow Brightonian duo IYES, but are making similar finely tuned tracks with a finely tuned aesthetic. There must be something in the water there. Or the rock. The Brighton rock.
They sing ‘I wanna get low with my baby and high on my own’ in what might be a clever repurposing of Fetty Wap, pining for their own indie version of a Trap Queen. Lines like ‘I wanna be addicted to the feeling of commitment but I’m too scared to try’ engender the hopelessness of bad boys who are actually trying to be good (or good boys who are actually trying to be bad), as we’ve seen done well recently by the surly and brooding The 1975.
The essence of the song comes out at the end as they sing: ‘I hate waiting around for what I want’. And there in a nutshell is the impatient expectation of youth.
‘Last Summer’, their most recent track which was only put up on the band’s Soundcloud this week, has a similar punchy rocky beat but has a lot more angry heart ache written into it than 'What I Want': ‘I’ll wait for you only if you wait for me’, because, it transpires, ‘I know what you did beneath the palm trees’. Holiday. Ruined.
‘Last Summer’ is the incensed fall out from ‘What I Want’ – it seems that MIAMIGO hedged their bets and went for what they wanted, and it got thrown back in their faces. Makes for good song writing material though, so keep it coming.
The pair’s Soda Lime Love EP came out over the weekend, signalling that there are more tracks to come very soon.
Words by Katie Rowley
SEE ALSO:
More From Our Network
