PITTY SING

Eighties music seems to be making a comeback these days, reborn in contemporary bands like Pitty Sing. The band’s music is reminiscent of Simple Minds, Erasure and Duran Duran, taking dancey electronic beats with British vocals. Songwriter and lead singer Paul Holmes was born in Manchester, England, but grew up in the U.S. ­ his band now based in New York. While borrowing and re-imagining the new wave sound, Pitty Sing also take their name from the Flannery O’Connor story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” where the main character is a cat named Pitty Sing who catapults an extreme series of dark incidents.

Like the character in the story, the band’s music also culminates into melodramatic swells. Holmes describes the band’s music as a “channeling of things, more driven by emotion and the creativity that comes out of extremes in emotion.” The music and vocals roll around and writhe until there is release. Their self-titled debut full-length was released on Or Music in early 2005.