GRAMERCY are from a different era which is not to say they are not an era-defining band. You’re gonna hear a lot more about authenticity and the way things oughta be but Gramercy really just tear up the rule book and throw it back at you. If you own a record collection worth its name, you’re gonna know immediately where to file them. After America and the Bee Gees you’ve got Crosby Stills Nash, Donovan and then the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac but where do you go from there? Well, not to put too fine a point on it (and I think you’re getting the idea by now) the answer lies herein.

Gramercy are Crispin Hunt, Dylan Rippon and Nigel Hoyle and their gloriously- chequered musical history proves somewhat essential viewing. Hunt is best known as the singer/songwriter (with one of the most distinctive and evocative voices in pop history) at the heart of the Longpigs, a band who enjoyed four top 20 hit singles and two top 20 albums between 1996 and 2000. The turn of the century saw the Longpigs fall apart and Hunt releasing only the (admittedly rather great) art/electro album Mayonnaise in November 2004 (with Howie B and Will O), an event that forced the NME to bemoan that Hunt was ‘one of the lost geniuses of indie.’ Well, as they say, not anymore. Rippon, for his part, hails from Carlisle and is an ex-Cambridge University Medicine Graduate. Although a passionate and devoted music freak, he didn’t get his first “official” taste of the music business until 1998 when he produced the debut album by Emma Townsend, “a female Nick Drake” and daughter of The Whos’ Peter. Subsequently, as part of a band called Solar, he released six EPs before releasing another EP All That Spanish Dust under the name Grand Union. It was after this that he struck up a friendship with Hoyle. Hoyle probably needs little introduction here as his name primarily springs to mind when conversation meanders (as it often does) onto the subject of Gay Dad. Hoyle spent seven years at their helm and now, recovered and at the age of 31, cites his favourite authors as Camus and Ellroy and his idea of heaven as “a great guitar”. Naturally, his ambition is to make “beautiful pop music”.

Well, that just might be a shared ambition as Hunt, Rippon and Hoyle have stumbled across something rather special with Gramercy. Surely formed by the thought that “they just don’t write them like that anymore do they?” and a shared love of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and the much-maligned Bee Gees - and all that that transcopic vision entails - Gramercy are the band you will want to hold to your heart like a wounded bird. People will stare, people will call you names, but nothing will stop you loving them. In fact, I’ll go further than that and say: remember how you all used to listen to John Peel under the bedclothes with the lights turned out? Well, you try doing that with Gramercy and the whole world might just get under there with you.

Of course, as they should, it’s the songs that do it. All three Gramercians (you see how easy this is?) share songwriting duties and it pays off. Hold On, no doubt the first single and the first thing you are gonna hear, is Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac writ large and a sure-fire No.1 Hit in America should they have anything to do with it. It was penned by Hoyle and features the heartfelt plea, ‘How can we hold on if we ain’t got each other to hold on to’. As they say, wise words, but I Will Fall is an even more heart-spinning, end-of-the-affair love song and something that Noel Gallagher would sell his guitar to have written. For the record, it was written by Rippon. Yet another, Love Is Love (Hoyle, again) is what might have occurred if a chance meeting between the Beatles and the Bee Gees had produced any tunes at all .. in 1967. It’s that good. Hunt provides lead vocals on all of the above and the main writing credit on possibly Gramercy’s most striking number to date, the extraordinary Possibilities. Essentially, a bisexual love-song in a folk-tinged John, I’m Only Dancing kinda way, Possibilities is about the, ahem, possibilities of him coming back to him when he’s finally finished with her. It’s a breath of fresh air. And finally, on the Rumours-style epic (all booming bass and harmonies) Fly LIke A Bird To Love (Rippon/Hoyle), Gramercy achieve perfection. This is what we call A Festival Closer. Whether that’s the Cambridge Folk Festival is another thing altogether.

Gramercy have more of course (and Please Don’t Lie and Never Want To See You Again spring to mind immediately) but all in good time. It should be enough that they exist and that you will love them. Again, whether you are willing to admit to loving them is another thing altogether. But fast forward to one day in the future and to that break-up with the love of your life. I hope it never happens but if it does, I see a car driving off into the distance and you by the side of the road clutching a record, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.



Phill Savidge 0208 3480373/07887 584 242
phill.savidge@btinternet.com

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