Hometown: Bristol.
The lineup: Steve Bird (vocals), Sam James (guitar), Wayne Jones (bass), Dave Betts (keyboards, guitar), Ed Gallmore (drums).
The background: Ramona Flowers is the name of the lead girl with the supercharged, seven evil exes in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Her name has been adopted by today’s five-piece from Bristol, although there is little in their music to suggest that they would be affiliated to a film based on a graphic novel with a surreal pop cultural feel. Actually, it’s hard to say what they are. They are a rock band who use electronic elements but they’re not an electro-rock band. The singer has the impassioned, declamatory tone of, well, someone “pretentiously rhetorical and bombastic”, as the online dictionary has it. But that’s not necessarily a criticism. Some of the music world’s favourite people are pretentiously rhetorical and bombastic; indeed, they became globally popular by being such. We’re thinking specifically here of Bono because that’s who the Ramona Flowers’ singer Steve Bird sounds most like: Bono, with some of the keening falsetto of Thom Yorke, a man who has successfully avoided being pretentiously rhetorical if not bombastic for years even though he evidently has it in him. • Guardian/Paul Lester new band of the day Aug 1st 2013