Yorkshire indie rockers Little Man Tate have returned with a new single after an eleven year hiatus. Boy In The Anorak, an unreleased track first recorded in 2007, is available to stream and download on all major platforms from today.
Posting on their social media channels yesterday, the band offered loyal devotees the opportunity to feature in a new video for the song. Little Man Tate’s fans can submit clips of themselves lip-syncing to Boy In The Anorak for a chance to appear in the promo.
Evening lovely people, we’re asking you to star in the video to celebrate the release of Boy In The Anorak tomorrow, across all major streaming services. All we need you to do is email us a 30 second clip of you miming along to the song at different parts. pic.twitter.com/6tzOJoOCGn
— Littlemantateofficial (@Littlemantateo1) October 22, 2020
Little Man Tate had formed part of a rejuvenated, Myspace-powered Sheffield indie scene in the mid-2000s; emerging at the same time as Steel City stablemates Arctic Monkeys, Reverend and the Makers, The Long Blondes and Milburn. Their breakout 2006 single The Agent (which sold out all of its 1800 copies as pre-orders) paved the way for an acclaimed debut album in About What You Know, which produced four top 40 singles including the melodic jangle-pop number This Must Be Love and the bawdy, Fratellis-esque Sexy In Latin.
A second Little Man Tate LP, Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy, followed in 2008 but the group split the following year. In a recent NME interview, frontman Jon Windle suggested that the band’s demise was part of a wider malaise in British indie music after its mid-noughties resurgence.
He said “It was such a good time for bands in general, wasn’t it? There’s not so many bands around these days in guitar music. Maybe there were too many [in our heyday]. It got a bit oversaturated; people got a bit sick of it…You’re always reaching for that next bit and it just kinda felt like we’d hit a bit of a brick wall. We weren’t gonna get any bigger and as much as we were enjoying it, we didn’t wanna get any smaller.”
The band announced their plans to reunite earlier this year, with two homecoming gigs at Sheffield’s 02 Academy originally pencilled in for September. The shows – which sold out in an astounding three minutes – have now been rearranged for April 16th and April 17th next year, with all original tickets remaining valid.
In a Yorkshire Post interview in September, guitarist Edward ‘Maz’ Marriott spoke of the band’s excitement at the prospect of getting back on stage. He said “We were always about playing live. That’s why what we are doing now is so important. The live experience is so much better for us and our fans than the experience of putting on a CD. The live feel of LMT is completely different to what is on a record. We will always look back with regret, but whenever I think about the gigs and atmosphere, that’s what gives us the fondest of memories.“
