TV on the Radio - Time for heroes?

Pulp

Mark Robertson assesses the fate of some musical slow builders and other short but sweet career trajectories

In it for the long haul

Pulp

Time to hit big: 12 years
Languishing in the back streets of Sheffield and the toilet circuit for almost a decade before Britpop, multiple Mercury nominations and ‘Disco 2000’.

Biffy Clyro

Time to hit big: nine years
In the time they had matured from post-grunge wannabes to strutting arena prog tarts, fellow hairy dude Dave Grohl had turned out to be the cool, famous one from Nirvana. Whodathunkit?

Richard Hawley

Time to hit big: seven years
Discounting his years with indie spods The Longpigs, Hawley has quietly been carving out his niche as Sheffield’s answer to Burt Bacharach for years before critical acclaim hit in 2006/7

Snow Patrol

Time to hit big: six years
We saw them, a few years into their career, playing a free show in Sleazy’s. Two years later they were in the top ten.

A flash in the pan

The Darkness

Time in the sun: 18 months
Went from being ‘A Thing Called Love’ to ‘That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore’ with shocking rapidity.

Ms Dynamite

Time in the sun: 15 months
The catchy first single, the Mercury Award-winning debut album…then the silence. Story goes she got pregnant, started a family and never quite got round to doing much with her sophomore effort.

Towers of London

Time in the sun: one year
The TV ‘reality’ series, the YouTube greatest hits… shame there wasn’t a song or two to go with it. Back with a second album currently which will inevitably sink without a trace.

Joe Lean & the Jing Jang Jong

Time in the sun: four months
A band so singularly crap, that their debut was pulled by the record company a week after it was reviewed in NME. Supposedly being released this January. Yeah, right.