15th July 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
Marking a thematic link to their lockdown project recording as Videostore, Nathan & Lorna continue to show their love of the retro, of the nostalgia, and specifically of the 80s with the second instalment of their ‘80s Actor’ series (released simultaneously with ‘Johnny’).
Shamefully, it took me a while to piece this one together, as I didn’t clock the concept, and simply because while I very much did my growing up in the 80s (being born in ‘75, I feel I lived through the best of the 80s at a good time, seeing the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies and Ghostbusters at the cinema, while Duran Duran and A-Ha were in the charts and on the radio (and yes, Kate Bush, too), I was simply ever drawn by anything featuring River Phoenix, and so wasn’t all that distraught in 93. But I’ve subsequently come to realise his iconic worth.
The song itself is something of a departure, the drum machine backed off and pumping away metronomically beneath a shoegazy drone. It’s heartmelting and melancholy, and as such, captures the feeling among fans, as well as conjuring a perfect pool of nostalgic sentiment that’s non-specific, corresponding with that fleeing ache, that momentary tug, where you find yourself yearning for… well, you don’t quite know what, or why, just that something lost in that time past. And all you can do is go with the flow…
AA
Aural Aggravation 