Clocks are a band who specialise in short and bittersweet, powerful and punchy pop-rock nuggets concerning new love and old valve radios, delivered using the tried and tested guitar, bass and drums method but rendered with sufficient vigour to make it all sound fresh, original, brand new.
Straight out of Epsom & Ewell come the four Clocks boys – and they are boys, aged 20-22 at the time of writing, making them a sort of hard-edged boy band, only a boy band who can play their instruments, write their own songs and have a hand in the production and presentation of their material. Nothing like a boy band at all, then.
Some of the things that have made Clocks what they are and sound the way they sound include the music of Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Hollies, Buddy Holly and The Beach Boys. And a bunch called The Beatles. "My writing influences were basically Lennon & McCartney because those songs got me into music," says Tom Hewitt, Clocks’ singer and main songwriter, who points out that he’s more of a Lennon fan than he is a McCartney man. "That’s what I’m looking back to and aspiring to. I don’t have too many modern influences."