Posts Tagged ‘Single Review’

Yes Grasshopper – Ghost Dog Pagoda

Posted: 3 October 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings – 6th October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Yes Grasshopper’s ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ is the lead single from the forthcoming album of the same name.

Grasshopper? Yes, grasshopper. Not cricket. While on a recent day trip to Berwick Upon Tweed, my daughter was asking about the sounds of the crickets or grasshoppers, and I had to confess I was unaware of the difference, and had to look up the main visual difference is the length of their antennae, and the main biological difference is how they make that distinctive sound.

While I’m still unsure if we were hearing crickets or grasshoppers, it’s clear that despite being in the north-east, we weren’t hearing Yes Grasshopper, as their most informative biography clarifies: ‘Grasshoppers are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic period around 250 million years ago. Those species that make easily heard noises usually do so by rubbing a row of pegs on the hind legs against the forewings, this is known as stridulation. Yes grasshopper formed in 2020 and make noises with a guitar and some drums. Emerging from England’s unforgiving northern coast, this dynamic duo present a wholly unique take on noise rock, with crushing riffs, white water rhythmic twists and barking intertwined vocals making way for heinously catchy hooks.’

As titles go, ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ it’s simultaneously visual and abstract. As songs go, it’s absolutely mighty.

The single starts out with a tight picked guitarline, which nags away, before the bass and drums crash in, hard and with the kind of density that feels like a body blow. There’s a moment of pullback to build the tension further before POW!! Fuck!

This isn’t the sound of innocuous insects: it’s the sound of ground-razing devastation. The distorted vocals are way low in the mix, only adding to the impression of monster volume – those smallish gigs where the backline and guitars are so fucking loud the in-house PA simply cannot compete and so the vocals are lost but somehow cut through and the thrill is just beyond words because the sheer sonic impact is beyond words… If you’ve ever experienced this, you will know, and this is the blistering force of ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’. If you haven’t experienced it, then you need to get out and witness more small-venue live music.

Back to the single, it’s a mess of noise, a full-tilt, all-out sonic assault. The hooks really come in the respite, where the nagging guitar returns, because the rest… it’s a brain-shredding attack. The vocals aren’t only low in the mix, but they’re a frenzied howl blanketed in distortion, and the song’s structure is a long way from a neat verse/chorus alternation. Fuck, it’s impossible to follow, and I have no idea what’s going on from one second to the next. But herein lies its sheer brilliance: ‘Ghost Dog Pagoda’ isn’t pretty, and makes no concession to commercialism or accessibility – not a single one. It hits you, hard, with a wall of abrasive noise, and it’s a beast alright.

AA

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Bedsit – F.I.D.O.

Posted: 22 September 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Forever Underdogs – 22nd September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I Got quite excited by Hull’s Bedsit on hearing their last release. Perhaps the summary in their bio explains it, more or less, in pitching the band as being of interest to fans of Basement, Nothing, Yuck, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and in next to no time, alongside my raving about them, they’ve come from nowhere (ok, Hull isn’t quite nowhere, but it works as a narrative) to airplay from Steve Lamaq and applause from Louder than War.

The joy of F.I.D.O. lies not only in its being a great tune, but from its gloriously lo-fi, crunchy sound. A twisty riff played almost tentatively by way of an intro is suddenly smacked along in a tidal wave of rhythm, bass, drums and it recreates the buzzing vibe of Dinosaur Jr on ‘Freak Scene’ or ‘Girl from Mars’ by Ash. It buzzes, it vibrates.

They’re pretty strident in their messaging here, and this is certainly no feel-good tune, as much as it’s a nihilistic howl that goes against the grain, and is certainly not a call of solidarity with their peers and contemporaries, It’s a shake, a slap, a sneer of derision that says ‘get a fucking grip!’

“F.I.D.O. is for the countless artists who labour to perfect their work, manifest their passions and achieve success, only to be left screaming into the void for years on end. It’s about the ridiculousness of dreams and the temptation of surrender. We’re made fools by our expectations of the music industry and the life of an artist, coaxed by visions of giants from a bygone era. The iconic rockstar is dead, or worse yet, duplicated posthumously in a vapid monetary mockery. It seems impossible nowadays for an independent artist to ever get heard, break out, be seen. When art is entwined with identity, emptiness can feel like death.

Why do we even try? Where does that spark come from, and is it at all worth trying to keep it alive? If an artist is neither seen nor heard, do they even make a sound?”

It’s a sentiment that not only do they fully espouse in their work, but one I can back to the absolute max. It’s not about the technicality, but the raw energy, and it’s right up and in your face, and then when the vocals come in against that welter of guitars, it’s absolutely fucking glorious. There are numerous references I just can’t call to mind, but there’s a dash of Therapy? and a pinch of Bilge Pump in there, and the refreshing thing about Bedsit is that while so many contemporary acts who bring that 90s vibe present sanitised, cleaned-up interpretations, Bedsit keep it raw, rough and ready – and in doing so properly capture the spirit of the era they’re so deeply rooted in.

F.I.D.O. is a massive, grungy monster. Driven by thick riffs and thumping percussion, the melodic and contrasting vocals land between Nirvana and MSP with aa hint of Fugazi as they melt grunge in a pot with post-punk and post-rock that maybe hits a spot in the region of Trail of Dead. But none of this really touches the rush and the squall.

The bottom line is that they’re bursting with energy, and they’re a band you can believe in. ‘F.I.D.O.’ kicks all ways, and the amount of ass-kicking they packing they pack into four minutes and twenty seconds is incredible.

The single comes backed with ‘Click Track’, a frenzied thrashing furry that’s pure and brimming with passion.

Feel the force.

AA

BEDSIT - _F.I.D.O._ ARTWORK

GLDN – Harmful If Swallowed

Posted: 16 September 2023 in Singles and EPs
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8th September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

GLDN – the vehicle for the one and only Nicholas Golden – blasts in by way of a return after a few fallow months with a single – his sixth – in the form of ‘Harmful If Swallowed’, taken from the upcoming remastered and expanded deluxe edition of their first release, First Blood. There was a lot of blood then, and moving forward, this new offering is less gore-centric, but is somehow yet more disturbing. This may just be a personal response – but then, what response is there to anything artistic in its nature – but I tend to be more unsettled by the psychological than the visceral. I mean, in real life, blood makes me feel nauseous and faint, but ultimately, I ca n handle it, but headfucks, they’re harder to handle.

Tripped-out piano provides the initial disorientating backdrop. Of course it does: GLDN’s domain is the dark and unsettling, and his cues stem in no small part from Nine Inch Nails’ magnum opus The Downward Spiral, the point at which Trent Reznor really found his stride in terms of nuanced composition and dynamics beyond harsh and soft, loud and quiet, but expanded his emotional range and sonic texture.

‘Harmful If Swallowed’ is well-studied, then, but it’s more than mere appropriation. This is one of those songs that’s dark, dense, and menacing, rather than overtly abrasive and aggressive, and the twisted, tangled emotions it explores are introspective and desolate but interwoven with a sense of underlying tension which hints at the turning of tables.

Two-thirds in, things take a turn for the heavy with a chugging crashing in as flames erupt and the darkness and crushing sense of apocalypse take over.

Stylistically in visual terms, GLDN is equal parts Reznor and Manson, striking and disturbing in equal measure. In the accompanying video, GLDN goes full Jekyll and Hyde. The Reznor GLDN crawls, naked, skin peeling, hunched and traumatised, flipping to thee sneering, croaking Manson GLDN who is the demonic supreme master.

GLDN continues to test, tease, and challenge, both musically and presentationally, and ‘Harmful If Swallowed’ is strong and progressive on all fronts.

AA

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Salvation Jayne – Thirst

Posted: 4 September 2023 in Singles and EPs
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1st September 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Since I was first introduced to Salvation Jayne, back in 2017, I’ve admired their energy, their punchy, punky rock tunes (unashamedly not ‘alt’ and straight-up kicking arse). But what happens when a band loses a pivotal member, particularly under rather messy circumstances? It’s nothing new, of course: Fleetwood Mac’s career after Peter Green was both longer and more commercially successful, and the same is true Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett’s departure and post-Gabriel Genesis. Roxy Music lost Brian Eno early on, and Marillion enjoyed a lengthy career post-Fish… and so on, from Iron Maiden to, er, Queen. Arguably, some of these lineup shifts have marked changes for the better. Others… maybe not so.

As far as many were concerned, myself included, Salvation Jayne was Chess Smith. Clearly, Salvation Jayne, releasing their first new music since her departure, would disagree, and they’ve forged on and are now clearly facing forwards and evolving. The arrival of Estelle Mey on vocals is swept over briefly in the band bio which announced a change in sound with the new lineup, describing it as ‘intense, dark and dynamic post-punk’.

It crunches in with warping electronics trilling over a murky bass noise that sounds like a bulldozer before slamming in with some serious force, the nagging guitar reminiscent of post-millennium Pitch Shifter and some vaguely nu-metal vibes, but still retaining the powerful pop elements which defined their sound, and it’s certainly a meatier and more aggressive sound they’re showcasing here. Contrasting shouty verses with a more melodic chorus, it’s a tried and tested structural formula, and they really work that dynamic, and it works well.

The layered vocals add unexpected depths and dimensions, and if there are moments where ‘Thirst’ feels crowded, the level of detail means there’s more to explore and it’s an adventure to unravel with subsequent plays and following the initial impact. Yes, Salvation Jayne are back, and they’ve got a big tune here.

AA

Salvation Jayne artwork

Binary Order – Slow Blade

Posted: 1 September 2023 in Singles and EPs
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28th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Techno/industrial is rather like craft beer. It was invented in Europe (KMFDM are obvious progenitors back in 1984), before being embraced in the States and with Wax Trax! almost singlehandedly spawning a factory for the genre, which in turn found significant popularity in mainland Europe, particularly in Germany.

English exponents are rather harder to come by, although Benjamin Blank, who has been working under the Binary Order moniker since 2008, is a worthy representative. His words on this latest single, lifted from forthcoming album The Future Belongs to the Mad (out at the end of November), illustrate perfectly why this mode of music is ideally-suited to life in Shit Britain: “’Slow Blade” is a reflection of the decline I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. It’s a decline that has gotten us to a point where we are more concerned with passing the blame than attempting fix the decay that has rotted away at us all, leaving many despondent and lost, myself included.”

I’m writing this in the week that, as schools are due to reopen after the summer break, hundreds are being forced to close or otherwise relocate students because the buildings are unsafe, built using cheap concrete which is structurally unsound and liable to collapse without notice. Our government has known about this for years, but has failed to act. And, indeed, over the last thirteen years, our infrastructure has been slowly crumbling – our roads, our sewerage systems, our rail network – as profit has been put before people, and we’ve become embroiled in petty patriotism, culture wars, and outright horrible racism and prejudice of every kind. It’s no wonder Blank feels as if our small island is sinking while the only things rising are rates of poverty, depression, and other mental health issues.

‘Slow Blade’ feels like a significant progression from the material which comprised previous album, Messages from the Deep. While it incorporated guitar elements, it was very much in the vein of early Nine Inch Nails, the sounds crisp, tight, overtly synth-dominated. In contrast, ‘Slow Blade’ is far more gnarly, far dirtier, more raw, rough-hewn, and simply more metal. And not the kind of metal you’d likely associate with industrial – the likes of Ministry or perhaps Godflesh – but gritty, murky black shit smashed together with the guitar slabs of nu-metal. At least, to begin with – because ‘Slow Blade’ is a song of psychotic multiple personalities, and a song in three parts.

Unexpectedly, the songs slows and goes first expansive and melodic, then explodes in a frenzy of stuttering techno beats that’s more Fixed than Pretty Hate Machine, and then it brings the two elements together in the third and final stage. While to suggest it has a particular arc, narrative or otherwise, feels like something of a stretch, ‘Slow Blade’ transitions through a series of emotions, from blind raging fury to the acceptance of defeat as everything collapses. The end is final. And we all know it’s coming.

AA

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Stoneflies – Now I am Become Death

Posted: 18 August 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Stoneflies – Now I am Become Death

This one has landed timely and on trend, with a title quoting J. Robert Oppenheimer, in turn quoting The Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture, which contains (in translation) the phrase “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” With things potentiaally still on the brink in nuclear terms between Russia and Ukraine, the prospect of global nuclear annihilation stands as likely now as any time as in the early nighties. To take a line from The Psychedelic Furs, ‘get smart: get scared’. And if it’s not nuclear annihilation, it’s climate change… we are all fucked, and the clock is ticking.

And yet…

If Barbenheimer has become a thing, whoop for the resurgence of cinema. Really. This is not an easy time to stay afloat, to keep things together. But… bigger picture. The world is on fire, but instead of funding fixes to climate change, the mega-rich are taking holidays in space. Hawaii will take billions to rebuild, but instead of donating from their spare billions to support it, Musk and Zuckerberg are facing off over a cage fight in the most embarrassing showcase of a machismo pissing duel this millennium. Fuck! This is wrong, so, so wrong.

In the face of this, it figures that black metal and goth and a host of genre forms which emerged from the bleak times of the 80s and early 90s have taken a firm hold on the now. Sure, I’ve mentioned it before, but it clearly needs reiterating: dark times inspire dark music and dark moods, and these are certifiably dark times. Fascism, racism, and oppression, are on the rise. You can’t trust anyone, least of all the government. They’re fucking you, and they have an eye on your escape.

We’re told that ‘Now I am Become Death’ is ‘a powerful and thought-provoking journey through the depths of human emotion and introspection. With hauntingly intense instrumentals and emotionally charged vocals, this track encapsulates the band’s vision of merging extreme metal’s raw power, progressive metal’s experimental arrangements, and psychedelic rock’s mesmerising spirit into a genre-defying sonic experience.’

We’re also told that ‘Their music is an exploration of the human psyche and the complexities of our existence with the new track a journey through the darkest corners of the mind, confronting our fears, and the struggle to emerge with a newfound sense of purpose and strength. ‘Now I am Become Death’ is part of a series of singles, which will be released over the coming months, from upcoming album All Too Human.’

Emerging from a hovering hum and an electrical crackle and darkness visible, a whistle of feedback pierces the eardrum… slowly descending, for a moment ominous and eerie, before the drums and guitars start to build… and then everything kicks in, a monster trudge of overdriven guitars and gasoline gargling vocals.

It’s brutal, pure devastation. ‘Now I am Become Death’ is four and a half minutes of ferocity. From the low, slow, insistent bass and wailing anguish of otherwordly voices before things assimilate into a demented, dark, groove. Where Stoneflies succeeds is in their balance and menace at the same time; the weight isn’t without detail, but the detail doesn’t diminish the weight, making for a tune of massive impact.

AA

Stoneflies artwork

Darkplace – Cars

Posted: 5 August 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Icons Creating Evil Art – 4th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The third single from Swedish act Darkplace is their first to feature vocals, and is not a cover of the Gary Numan hit.

The band are described as ‘a mysterious new Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk group whose forthcoming debut album, About The End Of The World, is a conceptual work inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them.’ They go on to say ‘for the members of this highly secretive group, it is not just about the music. They perceive themselves as more an art project that happens to be exploring and commenting on the state of the world through their chosen mediums of music and video.’

Is a band mysterious if they tell you they are, or does that undermine the mystery? Surely a lack of disclosure is mysterious in itself? If I’m overthinking, it’s almost certainly a consequence of their overexplaining, although I am entirely on board with the idea of an act taking their art seriously to the point of fully inhabiting that space. When it comes to concept-based creations, you have to fully believe in it, otherwise, how can you expect anyone else to?

When it comes to Darkplace, context counts for a great deal, and to provide this, I shall quote liberally here: ‘Centred around an alternative reality – or is it just a grim present and future? – the album is being unveiled gradually via a series of videos based on animated digital paintings for each of its tracks… Their new single, ‘Cars’ […] sees the story move on to a man who travels north following cryptic messages written on highway signs that only show up in the blast of his headlights. Is he the only person who can see them and follow the trail? Darkplace cryptically state that “trying to escape this psychotic, slow burning apocalypse is not easy. Nowhere is safe. These weird structures and phenomena seem to occur everywhere, all over the world. Nowhere is safe!”

Perhaps somewhat ironically, the slow-burning apocalypse of which they write is accelerating at a pace no-one can keep up with, and half the planet is on fire now, quite literally, although this afternoon I read of hailstorms of biblical proportions in Germany and Italy, smashing car windscreen and requiring snow ploughs to clear the streets. It really does feel like the end of the world, and there’s a strong chance that is truly is.

Detached from the narrative of the album, ‘Cars’ stands well as a standalone single. It’s a taut, dark (of course) slice of post-punk inspired tunage, and while its lineage is clearly one that can be traced to the early 80s, it’s equally indebted to the school of the early 00s, which brought us Interpol and White Lies. What goes around comes around, and here in 2023, times are the bleakest they’ve been since the early 80s, with the added bonus of climate change threatening the collapse of civilisation and life as we know it. It’s dreamy but driven by an insistent beat and nagging guitar lines, and if the vocals, floating in reverb, evoke The Charlatans or Slowdive, and there’s perhaps a hint of Doves in the mix, the energy is more reminiscent of early Editors. Lyrically, it’s anything but uplifting, but the musical counterpoint really sweeps you along, making for an exhilarating three minutes.

AA

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Bedroom Tax – Bad Behaviour

Posted: 30 July 2023 in Singles and EPs
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28th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Funny how time goes. Precisely two weeks short of a year ago today, I reviewed Bedroom Tax’s debut single ‘Kin’, against a backdrop of a heatwave and wild fires in the UK, and increasing level of panic over fuel costs ahead of the winter in prospect. And we thought things looked bleak then. No heatwave in the UK this year: instead, we’ve spent the last three months swinging between regular summer weather and days that more closely resemble October while the rest of the world burns, and we long for the days when it was only the cost of energy and Lurpak that were heading into the stratosphere.

Bedroom Tax are one of many bands with sociopolitical leanings who have adopted names which set their stance out in the simplest of terms. I’m thinking BDRMM, Bedsit, Benefits, bands born in many ways out of frustration and necessity, and their very existence is a statement about the crushing economic climate we live in – at least if you’re a regular person and not in the executive echelon, or otherwise comfortably off thanks to inherited wealth, a backhander from a mate in government, or an MP.

The so-called ‘bedroom tax’, introduced in 2012 is one of many examples of the tory government shafting the poor and the disabled, and as Michael Rosen pointed out in an article for The Guardian in 2014, the bereaved, was found in 2019 to be discriminatory by the European Court of Human Rights. No wonder the government are keen to ditch the ECHR: they keep ruling that their inhumane policies are illegal.

Since releasing ‘Kin’, Bedroom Tax have spent their time reflecting and refining their sound. It’s been time well spent.

‘Bad Behaviour’ is a magnificent melding of post-punk and post-rock with ‘urban’ elements, and possesses both beauty and bleakness simultaneously. Chiming guitars and programmed beats provide the backdrop to the incisive yet flowing rap of the lyrics, poetically dissecting social division and the hand we’re dealt due to privilege or lack of. It’s got bounce and groove, and even a certain noodly indie jangle that’s seen the sound of The Smiths cast through a more current prism that’s still more 2006 than 2023, but there’s a joy in witnessing the bounds of genre time being dismantled, and knowing that Morrissey would fucking hate it.

It’s a progression from the kitchen-sink reflections of ‘Kin’, but at the same time, there’s still that gritty realism, with echoes of The Streets, and the reason Bedroom Tax are so appealing is because there’s no pretence, no artifice: they’re telling it like it is.

And just as punk and post-punk emerged from the desolation of Thatcher’s Britain, so the current wave of acts who hark back to that but with the addition of more contemporary twists are coming from parallel circumstances. Austerity may not be the buzzword of the present, but we never left it: cuts upon cuts by cunts upon cunts are why we are where we are. And acts like Bedroom Tax articulate the everyday realities of life right now. We need these guys.

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Deadlight Holiday – Full Of Hate

Posted: 10 July 2023 in Singles and EPs
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7th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I recall, when I was growing up, people often being admonished for using the word ‘hate’. ‘It’s such a strong word’, would be the lecture. Usually it was adults telling teens this: no, you don’t ‘hate’ school, you don’t ‘hate’ that band, or that annoying kid in your class. I never saw it as such a big deal. I suppose, on reflection, we were using ‘hate’ in a hyperbolic sense. Now, however, we seem to use the word somewhat less frequently, but feel hate – real hate – being expressed more freely. It’s not pleasant, and while much is said and written about the toxic environments of social media, the real world really isn’t any more pleasant. From toxic work environments to increasingly right-wing governments creating division and stoking hatred of minorities, be they immigrants, the poor, or the disabled, the world we live in is not a nice place to be, and it’s small wonder that mental health issues are at an all-time high.

‘Full of Hate’ isn’t about the outward projection of hate onto individuals or groups, but the inward-focused grapplings of torment, as the accompanying notes explain: ‘The song captures the suffocating feelings of anger and isolation that engulf us and often leave us with a feeling of being confined. Moreover, the song does so within the span of ninety seconds.’

And that it does: they’ve condensed all the intensity of emotion into a minute and a half. Zero fat here. It’s the bass that defines ‘Full of Hate’. By which I mean it’s a 360-degree immersive sound, the thick distortion secondary in impact to the booming frequencies. So dense is the sound that it almost submerges the mechanised drums and growling vocals. The vocals are unexpected, at least on first listen: there’s an association with screaming and full-lunged roaring as giving vent to anger, rage, and catharsis. But on ‘Full of Hate’, the vocals are controlled, focused, all the more difficult to process in context. There are some moments of dodgy autotune, but overall, it’s that sense of keeping a lid on things that suggests psychopathy, and which renders ‘Full Of Hate’ all the darker, all the more intense.

It’s one powerful, tension-blasting minute-and-a-half that’s awkward and uncomfortable, seething rather than foaming as the rage flows.

AA

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JW Paris – Leave It Alone

Posted: 27 June 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Blaggers Records – 30th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Earlier this year, JW Paris were the millionth act to cover Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ – a song that bombed on initial release in 1989 and only started getting attention when it was featured on the soundtrack to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, and becoming a hit in 1991. What was interesting about JW Paris’ version is that it was different. It didn’t pussyfoot around being nice and delicate – not that it was insensitive or trashed the original, it just had the guts to be different instead of a predictably, safe, straight copy. And I suppose this sums the band up, really. They do their own thing – and it so happens to be good.

‘Leave It Alone’ is three-and-a-half minutes of choppy post punk with bite – not to mention a yawning guitarline that evokes the essence of Nirvana and The Pixies, straddling a magnificent strolling bassline and exploiting that classic quiet / loud dynamic – but keeping the overdrive in check in favour of a cleaner guitar sound – but with a chorus that’s eminently moshable.

Yes, of course it all pulls me back to the early 90s – no one song or band or anything specific, but that vague, aching haze of what it was like to be there in my late teens and early twenties. There’s some recycled gag about the 60s now being applied to the 90s along the lines of if you can remember the decade, you weren’t there, and there’s an element of truth on a personal level with it being the time I got into beer (and vodka) and live music, but there’s that other key element, namely the passage of time. It’s not even about memory fading: when you’re living life and simply in the midst of things, you don’t stop to take stock or pin a marker on your memory that any given moment in time was something to remember as special. It’s only in hindsight – even if that hindsight is developed in relative proximity to the event – that you often come to appreciate things for what they were. This is, of course, the nature of nostalgia, and why people in their thirties become fixated on the ‘golden age’ of music, movies, and TV, which almost invariably coincides with their late teens and early twenties before the weight of adulthood and the crushing tedium of work and shit took over. But I say this because the further a time recedes into history, the vaguer and more nebulous the recollections become.

It’s not that I can’t pinpoint where bands have leaned on Nirvana or The Pixies for inspiration, but the bigger – and vaguer – picture is that TV and radio and gigs were awash with acts which represented the zeitgeist: it’s impossible to remember all of the little bands who maybe released one single or nothing at all, who played in upstairs rooms in poky pubs, but the period overall is indelibly etched into my memory banks. And this is important, because JW Paris don’t sound like they’ve studied key albums of the time and appropriated accordingly, but have, instead, soaked up the spirit and distilled it into a sweet and powerful shot.

There are layers to this: ‘Take a look at me, am I the person that you wanna be?’ becomes ‘am I who you want to see?’ How much is projection, perception? And not just perception of others, but self-perception. Look in the mirror: are you who you want to see? And how much does that change over time? It’s not always easy to make peace with your former selves.

Speaking on the single, the band say “‘Leave It Alone’ is a deeply personal song that reflects our own inner journey of self-discovery and acceptance… With honest lyrics and a haunting melody, it invites our audience and listeners on an introspective exploration of identity and the longing for inner peace”.

And I guess that’s what the preceding five-hundred-word contemplation is: it’s my introspective exploration, as inspired by the song. A good song does so much more than fill a few minutes with sound: it enters you and takes you places. ‘Leave It Alone’ is a fucking good song.

AA

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