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Danny Popplewell doesn't sound much like the name of a pop star. Nor does his voice suggest the heady glamour of world tours and photoshoots, trashed hotel-rooms and celebrity parties. A hesitant burr that doesn't hide its Bradford roots, his speech has the bland timbre of an Ordinary Northern Bloke, and gives few hints of the philosophy degree he has quietly tucked under his belt.
But listen to Danny Popplewell sing, with his oddly-named band Ooberman, and you quickly realise you just might be dealing with the great white hope for British pop. The band's last two singles, Blossoms Falling and Million Suns, are breathless, irresistible surges, as fresh and sticky and summery as strawberries. Investigate the Ooberman back-catalogue of singles and EPs and you'll find a distinctive and unpredictable mixed bag: plaintive melodies with juicily baited hooks; glorious, psychedelic harmonies; spoken monologues; steady rhythms giving way to sudden changes of pace; raucous guitar, bass and drums giving way to mellow keyboards or piano. Oh - and a poem about a rabbit and some foxes. At times, you'll catch a hint of Beach Boys or early Beatles; Supergrass, The Supernaturals or Blur (whose guitarist Graham Coxon released their Sugarbum single on his Transcopic label). You might even hear echoes of those quintessential old codgers of English quirk-rock, XTC.
In a couple of weeks, Ooberman release their debut album, The Magic Treehouse, but before that, the band make their Scottish debut at T in the Park. According to reviewers, the Ooberman live show is a fiercer, more tempestuous beast than the records. "It's very compact and it's all the kind of maddest suff, all squeezed together into 25 minutes," agrees Popplewell. "A lot of it is the much more kind of hectic, challenging stuff."
Well, we like a challenge, but who exactly are Ooberman? The five band members are based in Liverpool, where Popplewell...