Lia Hide – Dinner
Conch Town Records – 25th March 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
Such a contentious word. Two syllables, it kind of has a satisfying downbeat in the middle before an inflection, and on the face of it, completely innocuous. But ‘dinner’ is a territory of dispute that denotes and divides regions. It’s all about positioning – whether it’s ‘breakfast, dinner, and tea, or breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is essentially an English debate, and personally, I believe cricket has the answer the end all debate, stopping for lunch and tea – afternoon tea. That and the fact that no pubs display a ‘dinner’ menu at lunchtime.
So, while Lia Hide is from Greece, I’m working on the premise that the follow up to the absolutely cracking ‘Proposal’, the first single from her forthcoming fourth album, The Missing Fourth Guest, is about an evening meal, with the lighting low – probably candles – and a long evening in prospect.
As she explains in the accompanying notes, “It’s an invitation to dinner , so we can mend things that went wrong. I go from being alone in my own head, in my mess, to reaching out for some communication with someone, anyone, so we can have dinner, discuss and focus on being alright.”
It sounds like a pretty nervy meal in prospect, and the track has an appropriately tense start, which burred whips of electric tension and glitching distortion cutting across the gentle piano and subdued beats. ‘Can we focus on being alright?’ she sings in a low-key, ponderous tone. Beats burst and stutter all around over a rolling piano before, seemingly from out of nowhere, brass bursts and blossoms, introducing an unexpectedly jazz feel to this roiling, multi-faceted electronica.
It’s anything but obvious, but it’s magnificently executed, and makes you hungry for more. Who’s for supper?
AA
Aural Aggravation 