New music from Pete Wentz. No, wait, come back...

"Try this, you'll hate it," someone wrote to me in an email yesterday. It was the new song from a band called Black Cards, who are fronted by the improbably-named Bebe Rexha and Pete Wentz.

Yes, that Pete Wentz. From Fall Out Boy. With the daft hair and the permanently black wardrobe. Married to Ashlee Simpson. Wrote "This ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arseface". Picture at the top of this post. Him.

So, yes, I was predisposed to hate this new song, Dr Jekyll and Mr Fame. The lyrics appear to be about - YAWN - the dark side of celebrity. Worse still, the band's Wikipedia entry insists they are trying to fuse reggae and electro-pop: The two most misrepresented, misunderstood, and deceptively complex genres in the history of music.

And yet... The tracks on the band's MySpace / YouTube / Facebook web presence are surprisingly good. I'm not sure where the reggae comes in, but the quartet have stumbled on a big-hearted, bouncy, pop groove and Bebe Rexha (23 points in Scrabble) has a pleasingly seductive purr to her voice. Wentz even gives a little tip of the hat to Abba's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight) on the keyboards.

A very pleasant surprise.

Black Cards - Dr Jekyll and Mr Fame

You can download this single if you "like" the band's Facebook profile (if there is a sentence in the English language more vile than the last one, I have yet to hear it).

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