Kiosk. Never heard of them before? Nor did I. Are they something exciting or something that's been done before? Well, we'll see...

For the uneducated amongst you, Kiosk are an art-rock female-fronted band, probably from London. One thing that concerned me when I was reading the credits for this EP was that all the songs were written by someone who isn't in the band... Which is never a good thing.

Maybe he broke his wrist before they got a chance to record the songs... Maybe they're all untalented and had to pay some guy from Sweden to write their songs for them. Who knows. But anyway, moving on, this 4 track EP kicks off with the ridiculously long titled single that, quite frankly, kicks serious arse. The song kicks off with a drum boom and then a seesaw ride of a riff enters and soon has its hand held by the vocals of our new heroin... sorry, 'heroine' (or is it 'hero' now?) Krissie Nicolson. 'Sickblues' has a riff that, should Mary Poppins be re-made, would be the perfect soundtrack to the bit where the penguins dance, flip-flopping around and brimmed with energy, I'm not ashamed to say that this (probably manufactured) band is actually really exciting me...

Now, it's a fact NOT a generalisation to say that females in rock obviously get more attention but what I like about this EP so far is that, unlike The Distillers, No Doubt, and Garbage, the frontwoman hasn't got the spotlight on her - Kiosk seem like a band, not a pop singer with a backing band.

However the other half of the EP, unfortunately, conflicts this. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid? Who knows. I think if I got more of a picture about this band then it'd be a bit easier for me to come to a conclusion on them but this is good music and I don't think you'd be a fool if you were to predict some sort of success flying their way later this year.

Craig Sharp