Local Cape Town band, The Plastics, have just released their second single, “Jukebox”, to radio stations nationwide. This is the second single to come from their critically acclaimed album SHARK. Their first single, “Caves”, reached number one on the TUKSfm SA Top 10 shortly after release.
“Jukebox” was written about six months before the release of SHARK and explores how the modern musical space has made it difficult for new bands to reach the ears of listeners, largely because of the inundation of commercial carbon-copied songs. Lead singer, Pascal Righini, talks about how this affects musicians in a poetic light: “There is such an overload of material coming out that nothing seems to matter and the bravest most relevant music often get pushed aside by mass-produced commercial trash, but the truth remains that good music is relevant and always matters.”
The second single has already seen some success on Jon Savage’s Rock Chart on 5FM, where it reached number one in July and stayed there for three weeks. The Plastics have seen a fair amount of press coverage in the three or so years they’ve been performing. They’ve had to face highs and lows and have pushed themselves to a point where South Africa is starting to take notice of them.
As a band, they’ve focused on experimenting outside of what they feel comfortable with and it shows; SHARK is a perfect example. They managed to enlist the talents of the knowledgeable and well-known Gordon Raphael (producer of indie-Brit band The Strokes’ first two albums) to work with them on production, and the quality of the music and production of the album is testament to the band’s determination to do great things.
Raphael comments, “I grew very fond of “Jukebox” – precisely because it reaches out in a new direction from the other songs on SHARK…the grooves, energy flow and vocals on “Jukebox” are just pleasing to me in a great way, which is that the song is compelling, captivating and crystal clear – without being cheesy, corny or kind of stupid like so many songs that are crawling for 
public attention these days. To have a catchy song that’s just not an imitation of 1000 other things, and that doesn’t contain elements that are insulting to one’s intelligence; well that’s really the domain of the great bands, such as The Beatles now, isn’t it?”
And now the band has even more to be excited about. They recently worked with the Morcos Brothers to shoot the first music video from SHARK for Caves. The concept was inspired by flash dancers and retro rock so will take you right back to the 80s, but don’t be fooled, The Plastics and the Morcos Brothers have added in some of their own contemporary energy to create a piece of work that is bound to get the attention of viewers.
The Caves music vid is set to be released in December 2010, and The Plastics definitely have some more exciting things happening before the year is through, but they’re keeping “mum”.
Watch this space.
Jade Scully is a copywriter excited about writing copy and stories, blogging about the world and editing. She currently and regularly publishes her stories on a number of blogs. Jade loves animals and hopes to begin writing copy for the animal rescue charity TEARS as her contribution to the cause.
