The Organ - Thieves

by Tom Mendelsohn

Vital organ

"Sometimes, as with all stately, funeral music, they can drone a bit too much on and a song will lose its impetus, but, on form, the band offers something genuinely, pleasingly different."

The Organ so far; five women with haircuts form a band in 2004, delivering one excellent album in 2006 and then break up almost instantly. Two years later, they release a (pretty darned) posthumous six-song EP made from the scraps of a proposed second album (this EP, hence the review).

The first thing you notice about the Organ is their singer, Katie Stretch. She sings in a magnificent sonorous contralto, intoning her lyrics with all the solemnity of a girl-led Editors with added tunes. Such is her quality that she qualifies as a genuine USP for the band – not something most bands ever get.

Without her regally chiming along, they’d just be a pretty middling post-punk outfit – adept enough at turning a melancholy melody, but without anything to lift them from the gothy crowd. With Stretch at the helm, though, they have an almost religious musical presence; a majestic, hypnotic atmosphere.

Sometimes, as with all stately, funeral music, they can drone a bit too much on and a song will lose its impetus, but, on form, the band offers something genuinely, pleasingly different. It’s a genuine shame that they died, because the augurs were that the band had enough in the tank at least for a great second album. Still, at least we’ve got this.

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