Slow Club should be AWFUL. Irritatingly good-looking pair of teenagers play skiffle-flecked tweepop with water-filled bottles and a chair filling in for drums, all wrapped up in the ever-dreaded 'kooky' lyrics…gah, it makes you want to leap into a cauldron of treacle to wash away the cloying saccharinity that immediately sticks to your clothes just looking at the front cover.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Me and You is actually bloody brilliant. The press release pushes for White Stripes comparisons – woah, the girl plays drums! – but that does Slow Club a disservice. Yes, there's hints of rockabilly here and washboard bass there, but this is not a song that looks longingly over its shoulder at the 1950s solely for fear of turning round and facing the front of today.
The lyrics are more Neutral Milk Hotel surreal than Jack White's 'I wish I was a baby' schtick. And the music refuses to sit still for a moment, it hops around the song's 101 different parts with barely concealed joy. Then they stick a grown-up school choir in at the end. A whole gig of this might well reraise the punchability quotient, but in small doses they're more than let off.
1 comments:
Post a Comment