Music Features

Hear the full interview by clicking the link below.

If there were a dib-dib-dubbers badge for catchy pop-rock-can't-get-out-of-your-head tunes, then Scouting For Girls would have it proudly sewn upon their forest green, freshly pressed shirts.

First single, She's So Lovely, was rather ubiquitous. In fact, it still is. Hitting the charts in the summer the track was a ray of sunshine in the top ten for six weeks.

Now new single Elvis Ain't Dead has the same cheeky chappiness and melodic contagiousness to make sure the boys from Ruislip are not the proverbial one hit wonders.

Frontman Roy Stride, who formed the band in 2005, speaks with the innocence and excitement of someone in a band that's still reeling from only being signed nine months ago.

Valentine's record deal

"We were saying that this is actually going to be the first Christmas where we're not working in a shop for years. Seven or eight months ago we were still working and now we're sitting on a tour bus."

It's all true. Roy was working at Carphone Warehouse until recently, the band were signed in February, and Roy was speaking to me on the blower from said bus.

Although the SFG (as they're affectionately known) rise was not exactly overnight. Roy and drummer Peter Ellard were friends in, you guessed it, cub scouts from six years old and they've been gigging under different guises for nigh on ten years.

The story of signing their record deal bleeds with romance.

"We signed on February 14th, we gave up our jobs on the Friday... It wasn't romantic for our girlfriends when we rolled in at half past 11 going "we got a record deal!" By the Monday we were in the studio recording the album."

Angela Rippon

The band will be in Cambridge on 2nd December and have been here as recently as October. Not that Roy could be certain.

"Have we played Cambridge before? I don't think we have, have we?" he asks away from the phone's mouthpiece.

"Let me just check with our tour manager." There's some brief whispers. "Oh yeah, Angela Rippon."

Angela Rippon? It turns out that this is code for Anglia Ruskin. SFG played the Fresher's Ball there to welcome the new intake of students but will be selling out the "looks like we're gonna make it" Junction before Christmas.

Stripped of pretension

Roy is as light hearted as the lyrics in his songs and there's generally a punch line around every conversational corner. But suggestions that his quick-fix pop-rock lacks musical substance causes him to choose sterner words.

"It's not going to be for everyone but it is what it is and we don't make any bones about it being anything different. There is a lot of heart that goes in to our music, especially when we play live and on the record."

Music stripped of pretension and all that arty gunk that seems to come with the indie scene these days? Surely we're allowed to indulge every so often?

Hear the full 15 minute interview by clicking the link below.

Scouting For Girls' new single Elvis Ain't Dead is out on December 17th and the self-titled album is available now at all good record shops and some rubbish ones. They're also playing The Junction, Cambridge on December 2nd 2007.