A Cappella News

The Scotsman

It must be great being a roadie for The Magnets. No guitar amplifiers to lug up endless flights of stairs, no drum kits to assemble, no PA speakers to transport from one town to the next. Yes, life must be pretty laid back for The Magnets’ technical team. All they have to worry about is pressing the band’s suits and making sure their microphones are plugged in - because The Magnets don’t use any instruments - all they need are their voices to produce a cappella singing straight from the gods.

The Magnets’ Edinburgh Fringe Festival show is a celebration of their adventures in the music industry since first coming to Edinburgh as youthful buskers seven years ago. We find out how they became Tony Blair’s favourite band, Geri Halliwell’s backing band and what it takes to be a boy band, albeit an unsuccessful one.

Swaggering on stage, The Magnets are the epitome of cool. Confident, they know they have a rare talent - and they know the audience is going to love it. One by one, the boys reel off an amazing array of vocal sounds and pitched mouth noises that create the illusion of listening to a full, live band. At first it’s hard to take in what’s happening. As one member of the band makes percussive sounds, another provides subsonic bass vibrations. The rest fill any gaps with free-floating harmonies.

Full of great songs and amusing anecdotes, the band’s set is consistently punctuated by video messages of goodwill from their celebrity fans. Barry McGuigan puts in an appearance as do comedy duo Mel and Sue. And following a mind-blowing solo display of tonsil acrobatics by human drum machine Andy (Iceman) Frost, Little Britain comedian Matt Lucas pops up at the end to congratulate him: "With lips like that, imagine what he could do for you," he says. Over the course of an hour, tunes made famous by Elvis (A Little Less Conversation) and The Turtles (Happy Together) go down a treat. As does The Magnets’ "hit" - it charted at No 77 - All The Wrong Reasons.

The highlight of the show, however, comes with a demonstration of the lessons they learned at "boy band school". Here, the lads pull off a series of hilarious poses and dances, while maintaining they’re not bitter at being dumped by a major label. Indeed, if there’s one thing that lets The Magnets down it’s their near constant moaning about how desperately they want to land a No 1. A highly enjoyable, thoroughly entertaining display of the human voice. Just like their name suggests, The Magnets are a powerfully attractive proposition. Check them out.

Posted by acapnews at August 31, 2004 9:09 PM