Maudite Dance were formed from the much-loved carcass of The Clerks; a Parisian four-piece who met at film-school, penned a clutch of stomping songs, then fled their native city for the romance and frivolity of Stockport. The North West embraced them like a grizzly bear, hailing them as ‘France’s best import since Eric Cantona’, and branding them ‘potentially the coolest thing on 8 legs’. After the batting their live lashes, this was adjusted to: ‘not only the coolest thing on eight legs but also the sexiest’.

The Clerks soon ... (+) expand

Maudite Dance were formed from the much-loved carcass of The Clerks; a Parisian four-piece who met at film-school, penned a clutch of stomping songs, then fled their native city for the romance and frivolity of Stockport. The North West embraced them like a grizzly bear, hailing them as ‘France’s best import since Eric Cantona’, and branding them ‘potentially the coolest thing on 8 legs’. After the batting their live lashes, this was adjusted to: ‘not only the coolest thing on eight legs but also the sexiest’.

The Clerks soon made themselves at home, living off cucumber sandwiches and repeats of Lovejoy, whilst playing with the likes of Starsailor, Mercury Rev, Polytechnic, Tiny Dancers and Dead Disco. Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq championed them over the airwaves, and they released a single, The Dissidents, with Art Goes Pop. It sold like hot cakes.

2007 commenced with a French tour supporting The Automatic and The Sunshine Underground. Then, in May 2007, a week in which The Clerks were declared NME’s ‘Best New Band on MySpace’, and enjoyed a rakish coquetry on MTV 2 as one of the winners of Oxjam’s Get Seen, Get Heard competition, the ‘art-pop-rock glory kids’ spun themselves a music cocoon. The Clerks were dead, Maudite Dance was born.

Still leading a merry masquerade through the layered soundscapes and incandescent boy-girl harmonies of The Clerks, Maudite Dance are one member bigger, and rotund with renewed energy. The influences remain - Joy Division, The Beatles, Sonic Youth, Prince - as do the hypnotic live performances and rippling of guitars, samples, keyboard and popcorn drum beats. (-) collapse