ELK IS AT HAND
Bloody Shoe-gazers! They all like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, moans Steve 'Clark's Commandoes' Lamacq, and display massive personality deficits. Moose are the elk-ception that prove the rule. Caribou boys: Ed Sirrs.

    A strummer from one of the all-new shoe-gazing bands walks into a train station and asks for a ticket.
    "Where to?" inquires the BR penguin.
    "Where? I don't know. Where are we going?"
    And here's where the nagging doubts begin! In spite of all the euphoria over the latest wave of New-pop bands--the Chapterhouse brigade, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel and more, more, more--there's still a strange uncertainty over how long these groups can stay the course. How far they can actually go in altering the present course of music.
    I suspect people have to too excited over the shoe-gazers (see also 'Murmuring' bands) simply out of desperation to fill column inches (and thus label roster/venues/people's pockets). Admittedly, the Chapterhouse album clocked up 30,000 sales according to Dedicated, and Slowdive's current 'Holding Our Breath' EP was very nearly a Top 40 record--to add to Alan McGee's sins--but it's like toddlers being applauded merely for being able to walk.
    Which is, essentially, where we part on this one: people have told me recently that I expect too much from these bands too soon--but the problem is, no one else seems to expect anything at all. You give them some room to move and consequently want them to make a run for it (not sit on the floor, as recent releases suggest). Is this the first Movement with no movement?
    Where is the sheer force and delicious in-your-face passion of Sonic Youth rock'n'roll and the My Bloody Valentine melée which these people always name check?
    The frustrating aspect, inherent in the current crop of Boys in Bands (apologies, Rachel Slowdive), is their constant struggle to convey any sense of personality. You could have more fun interviewing a cardboard box.
    If this music--the latest, and potentially most interesting progression along the Valentine's road--is to get anywhere, it has to start opening up and making some positive moves. The longer it stays put, the more damaging it'll get in terms of stagnation. Moose, bless their cotton socks, know this to be true. There is hope yet.

    MOOSE ARE an unpredictable, contradictory source of inspiration and frustration at the minute. They can be spellbinding and appalling on consecutive nights; graceful then clumsy on record. We love them, though, because they like a challenge. They aren't content with what they've got in the way of a cult following and the correct look.
    They say the journalists have created the whole Murmuring scenario and squashed them into it, like a size eight foot in a size six shoe. And then they go and blow it by admitting they fell into forming a group because, well, they had some guitars and there was nothing much on TV one night, so WHAT THE HECK!
    Now sharing the same management as Lush (all these bands have the same management, like all snooker players belong to the Matchroom mob), they signed with Hut records late last year, releasing their fidgety first EP, 'Boy', in January - a good, but flawed debut which led off with the excellent 'Jack', but then petered out.
    Likewise their new record, the 'Cool Breeze' EP, is a likeable mish mash. This time, however, they've started experimenting and building on their sound. It's more diverse and bewitching (a real grower, as they say in the trade). Moose know it's not enough just having the right sound for the right time.
    "I know what you mean about this contemporary sound," admits singer/guitarist Russell, a likeable David Gedge-style anti-hero, "but I don't think ours is like that. Live we might be, but on the records, the vocals are right up there instead of being embedded in the music.
    "Most of our songs are melancholic, but there's a really good quality in being 'blue', which is quite attractive. There's a lot of influences involved like Country & Western stuff, and things which pull at the heart a bit. Not just lyrically, but in the melodies.
    "I think each band are pretty individual anyway. Lush have got their own sound, Ride have... jus the songs stand everybody apart. I mean, ours are written on a 12- string acoustic, then built from there. The structure's all different."
    "But more than that, a lot of the bands around now are going in really, really young, very NEW," add guitarist Kevin, official nickname Moose (which is where they derived their moniker). "They've all got effects pedals and everybody likes Sonic Youth and the Valentines, so no young band is going to pick up a guitar and sound like the Allman Brothers. It's like Bobby Gillespie said a couple of weeks ago about people without any real experience of life picking up guitars and not really saying anything...he said I'd much rather meet someone like Charles Bukowski than someone who reads his books. People haven't quite found their way.
    "But I think, over the next six months we'll see bands within that set up, finding their own direction, so hopefully Slowdive won't sound a bit like MBV. We're changing all the time, who knows where we'll be by Christmas?"

    MOOSE'S TOUR bus is like a cross between a hippy caravan and the front-room of a well-lived-in bedsit (on wheels!). This is good, because it tells you more about Moose than they do themselves. There's a day-trip atmosphere on the way to the gig, and a party-four-pack-night-before-the morning-after scenario on the way home.
    Listening to Moose you find it hard to equate the anxious, occasionally frail words and tones with the average drinking capacity of the men themselves. Yet that's par for the course as well, this inability (or refusal) of the New Pop bands to give away too much of their character to the audience. They aren't so much cliquey, as outgoing in the right sort of company. Russell is also a Spurs fan and has been known to shout at noise levels which would get him banned by some London councils.
    In the meantime, there is a proud but sad vibe to Moose music, an at odds shyness. Especially, infamously, the on stage fascination with staring at their feet, which spawned the Shoe-gazing tag.
    Russell is quick on the volley with this one.
    "I think that's because we haven't got big egos to feed. Different bands, like Blur, are brilliant live, but it's just not in our characters to act on stage, we don't really need that adoration. It's like how you react to social situations. If you go out with a bunch of people you don't know, then I get really shy and I don't say much."
    "Having said that, in 18 months' time we might feel more comfortable," add Kev (who I first me properly at a Valentines gig in Nottingham a year and a half ago). "Me personally, I'm just not an all-over the-place player on stage. I think I'm scared my trousers will fall down."
    All this, of course, comes five years on from 'C86'. Since then the faces have changed, the best of that bunch having either developed or copped out (where applicable).
    There are similarities, though: contrary to what people might tell you, there were never enough good records around then. There aren't now (Catherine Wheel's 'Painful Thing' EP glides but is perhaps too linear, Chapterhouse produced their 'Pearl' amongst swine).
    Into this landscape, Moose this week release 'Cool Breeze', which kicks off with the drum-skittled guitar delight that is 'Suzanne' (reaffirming their fascination with names and characters in songs). 'Suzanne' builds neatly from a twinkling intro into a mournful, sparkling piece of pop with hints of magic and mystery.
    "Well, yeah, it's everybody dressed up as women with me at the front in a suit with a microphone--and it's set in this sleazy nightclub," explains Russell, "with loads of shots of make-up going on."
    "It's got a lot of character to it, which is basically what you're saying other people haven't got," adds Kevin. "We didn't want to go halfway, we went the whole hog, it's totally over the top. Maybe we've found a way of getting over our problems with stage presence...mind you, if we went on stage in drag all the make-up would run with the sweat."
    "I don't like performance videos," returns Russell, "which is what a lot of management and record company's want. They always look ridiculous. But this one, we're doing a performance video but making it really stupid. There's some good images in it."
    Does it have any significance to the song?
    "I didn't think so when we did it, but the way it's filmed is really clever," says Kevin. "It seems like a really bad dream going on for Russell, he keeps looking over his shoulder and all of a sudden his band's turned into Suzanne."
    Moose have nightmares too. They also have great dreams on an ever expanding scale. They're currently on tour-their first proper headlining jaunt, following last year's dates with Lush-and close at London's ULU; the nucleus of the band (Russell, Moose and drummer Damion) being augmented on this outing by ex-McCarthy, now Stereolab guitarist Tim and ex-Modern English bassist Mick (another clue to the flexibility which makes you think they'll grow and mature).
    Similarly, it'll be interesting to watch the fate of their slightly distanced brethren. Despite all my doubts, I think a fair percentage of the Shoe-gazers will start looking up by winter. Moose will be there at the head.