Underground Railroad

We had been wondering which city could be called France's capital of rock. (It's not Paris, obviously. Rock ruffles your clothes, musses up your hair.)

One popular suggestion was Clermont-Ferrand. We also considered Rennes, Nantes and Grenoble as contenders. And after a Tidy Towns-style inspection and judging process, we've come to a decision.

The capital of French rock is London.

Only last week we featured John & Jehn, the lovey-dovey art-rockers who've set up shop Thames-side. Before them there were The Teenagers, swearing like troopers.

Now we've discovered Underground Railroad (right), three more Frenchies bringing noisy alt-rock to Her Majesty's gig-spots. They're named after a 19th century secret escape network that helped slaves free Southern states and head north to freedom, so QE2 would want to watch out for the subversive French element loose on the royal thoroughfares.

Further to that, in French a hit single is called 'une tube'. And they live in London, where the underground railroad is called the Tube. And they're a band, right, so they could have hits. And they'd be 'tubes' in French. And... oh, forget it. We thought it was clever.

The trio - Raphael, Marion and J.B. - recently released an album, 'Sticks And Stones'. It's bloody good. For some reason the promo blurb on our copy compared them to The Pixies, which is absurd - if anything, their squally post-rock sounds a bit like Sonic Youth. But with a few catchy tunes. You can check some out on their MySpace page.

Here's the video for a fine recent Underground Railroad single, 'Kill Me Now':

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