it’s time for a London indie band that walks into the room already convinced they’re the second coming of The Libertines. Leather jackets, cigarette burns on the rehearsal room carpet, songs about bad nights and worse mornings. Most of them collapse under the weight of their own references before they’ve even released a decent chorus. French Dogs, though, might actually have enough chaos and charm to survive it.
“Broken Glass” is a properly scrappy little monster of a single. It sounds like five lads who’ve either just come off stage or just been thrown out of somewhere sticky at 2am, and honestly that works massively in its favour. The guitars arrive swinging immediately — rough-edged, loud and twitchy without becoming completely shapeless noise. There’s clear influence from The Strokes in the tight grooves and deadpan swagger, but there’s also that filthy Britishness running underneath it all that keeps things grounded closer to Camden backstreets than New York cool.
The real selling point is the vocal performance. It’s not polished, and thank fuck for that. When the track leans into its central hook — “And I would walk through broken glass…” — it actually lands with conviction, nice one.
You can picture the frazzled mornings they keep talking about. Half-hungover tube journeys, dead-end jobs, relationships held together with blind optimism and caffeine. 🙂
The song barely gives you a chance to breathe, constantly pushing forward with nervous energy. That probably explains why their live reputation is growing so quickly across Europe. You can hear a band built for sweat, beer flying through the air and tiny venues packed dangerously over capacity.
Still, “Broken Glass” isn’t flawless. There are moments where the vocal gets buried under the sheer wall of noise, and while that scruffiness is part of the appeal, a touch more clarity could’ve elevated the chorus even further. The band also flirt dangerously close to indie revival clichés at times. If the debut album Here’s to Pretending is going to genuinely stand apart, they’ll need to keep pushing their songwriting into more distinctive territory rather than relying purely on attitude and energy.
But honestly, attitude and energy still count for a lot when they’re this believable.
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