Liverpool quartet ‘The Grants’ are one of the best unsigned bands in the United Kingdom. Easy. Having taken up residency at my club Death Disco, it is a rock’n'roll treat to hear them play every night. Even in a small club they have the ability to produce the effect of stadium sized rock’n'roll. I have seen people actually converted to hard core fandom at the shows, dazed by Chris Grant’s slo-mo anthems and the quiet power of his soulful choirboy voice. Every night they pack out their shows and bleed real heat. They get 3,000 plays a day on Myspace, but the music business doesn’t even know they exist (and they wonder why their industry is dying). In a quick-fix music universe, The Grants are growers and have true staying power.

‘I am the One’ and ‘Moonlight Wall’ fall under the spell of northern heroes Echo and the Bunnymen. Their approach is quiet and subtle, yet works with the idea of ‘big music’. This is evident in the utterly classic ‘Our Story’, a Crazy Horse-like anthem which evokes Springsteen’s 1975 Born to Run ambitions to sound like ‘Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by Spector’. Within the songs, you realise, the ballast and real power within the grooves. Their loose jangling quirkiness translates into unhealthily obsessive anthems. The Grants are all about the songwriting and the attit ude as he works his way through hundreds of songs in preparation for a forthcoming debut, he is able to offer up the proof for the big belief in themselves.

Alan