Stricken City: Mistakes happening for Fact

Stricken City, another immaculately thrilling indie band from the ACTH camp, were interviewed by yours on a blustery Brighton beach in March 2008 for Fact's new talent section:

Stricken City drift and jerk and are bright windy days and flowers in jam-jar vases. Set up in the midland's endless leafy suburbs four years ago by schoolfriends guitarist Iain Pettifer and singer Rebekah Raa, the band play tight pretty art rock. A year or so ago, perhaps in order to make the line-up sound even more like a 1930s radical literary circle based in the East Sussex countryside, drummer Kit Godfrey and bassist Espen Dahl were recruited.
Stricken City sit happily in the fine tradition of naff-town daydreaming, cankicking and stargazing: "We met when Rebekah moved to Northampton, where I'd lived since ever. I got out as soon as I could! Rebekah came to London a year later, and went to drama school before going to the London College of Fashion," says Iain. "We were the kids on the outskirts, definitely! It was an opportunity to take in a lot of music, watch a lot of films and read a lot of books: I think we both wanted to do something less ordinary than drinking in crap clubs."
Influences, in the most charming way possible, are worn on the sleeve: Orange Juice's fey 303s, Young Marble Giants' pastoral swoons, the cocky, precocious hyper-invention of the Slits slide in and out of the imagination. Ideas bounce ecstatically, fresh, clean and bright. Recalling LMC's constant retraining regime, stricken City is fresh with unlearnt intellect: "We're very, ahem, 'mistakist'. Only Espen and Kit are what you could call experienced! I learnt guitar in a week, and Rebekah has never bought a record in the seven years I've known her. It's the way we like to work: learning to play as much as playing, writing songs by stumbling on niceness. You know that that kind of extend to the production: it's been co-produced by Will from Adventures Close To Home [who signed them earlier this year], who has never produced anyone before – he's a house DJ." House is under the skin of tunes like Tak O Tak and Bardou, there like the answer; bass carrying through, both driving and delicate, with elegant vocals swanning around. "Dance music kind of seeped in I suppose: we'd always hang around at ACTH, and Rebekah always sews her clothes to late night pirate radio. We do play dance music, yeah. It's just a little too awkward to dance to."