Guardian Arts Section

.........Still, there is at least some hope of salvation. Three people in north London will doubtless tut at my tardiness, but I recently received some "product" by the much-admired teenage Scots quartet called the View. The crapness of their name - taken, apparently, from a pub in their native Dundee - and their apparently excessive debt to the Libertines matter not: their music bulges with the right stuff.

Their latest single is a barnstorming tale of pub-related torpor called Superstar Tradesman, though it's much more instructive to focus on its predecessor, a shabby stroke of wonderment called Wasted Little DJs, which landed in the top 20 last month. It charges along with the kind of manic glee that most British music seems to have sacrificed in favour of a grim careerism. As with some of the best rock songs, you cannot decipher at least half the words ("Is it me, is it me, agency/ And the cleverest blonde weekend," the chorus seems to go), and the fact that its intro is slightly out of time is all part of the point. To cap it all, as evidenced by its title, it has the whiff not of idiot classicism, but cider, broken glass and a good night down that archetypal British institution known as the indie disco..............

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John Harris
Friday September 29, 2006
The Guardian