If you’re seeing the same message above that says the video can’t be played on here, then please follow the ‘Watch on Vimeo’ link.** A bit annoying that it isn’t on YouTube, especially considering that they have an alternate video for the same song on there. The one on Vimeo is the one I prefer, and the one I first saw back in 2007.*

So this is ‘Lucio Starts Fires’ by Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong. It was their first ever single released in the aforementioned year. The video played on MTV2 one day and I was immediately hooked, just in terms of its melody and rhythms. There’s an ashy sound to the guitars which caught my ear too. Its lyrics look at a narrator who seems to always be around whenever trouble starts brewing, though it’s never his intention to cause any harm. He also seems to be great at making friends with people. Or at least tries to be friends with people who don’t really reciprocate the relationship. It’s a typical NME indie 2007 era song that’s really good and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Big things were meant to come from this band. Following this song came ‘Lonely Buoy’, a track I didn’t warm to immediately but got accustomed to eventually, and ‘Where Do You Go’, the big single that was meant to lead right into the release of their album. NME hyped up the record giving it an 8/10 rating. But the album never arrived. The band felt that the music didn’t reflect their true potential, something along those lines, and to this day the album has never seen the light of day. The group split up in 2010, another casualty of the ‘landfill indie’ scene – a term I didn’t know was a thing until I read this VICE article the other day.

*09/01/2021 – Alternatively, you can just listen to it here.

**15/06/2024 – Hey, the vid’s on YouTube now.