The Fat Angel Sings

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The average age of Charlie Belle is 15. Now, there are adolescent rock bands who do a high-energy thing that can’t help telegraphing their youth, but that’s not what Charlie Belle are about. In fact, listen to their plaintive melodic indie-pop, to the singer with her sweet seen-it-all voice and the polished performances of the rhythm section, and you would assume they were in their early- to mid-twenties. Put it this way: if they were in their early- to mid-twenties, they would still be great. As it is, they’re amazing. They make you scramble for your history books to check how old the other famously young indie rockers were when they set out; people such as Paul Weller or Alex Turner – but they were more like 17 or 18 when they kicked off, weren’t they? This is a whole other level of precocious accomplishment. Jendayi Bonds (vocals, guitar), Gyasi Bonds (drums, vocals), and Zoe Czarnecki (bass).Actually, Jendayi Bonds, Charlie Belle’s 16-year-old singer, guitarist and songwriter – who, along with her 14-year-old drummer brother Gyasi, is home-schooled – dreams of making a pilgrimage from Austin, Texas where she lives to High Green in Sheffield, so she can walk the streets where Turner, her all-time hero, spent his teenage years dodging mardy bums and riot vans. The likes of Belly and the Lemonheads have been cited as comparison points in reviews of Charlie Belle’s music, but really they’re more English-sounding than that. We can hear Morrissey’s wan yodel in Bonds’ voice, or Harriet Wheeler of the Sundays’ pure, clear tone, and their jaunty melancholy jangles owe more to 80s indie-pop than anything American (although they did form – several years ago! – after filming a video of themselves performing Strange Powers, by one of their favourite US bands, the Magnetic Fields).