Slow Club - Early Works

General Ratings:

Music: 7
Lyrics: 6
Scope: 4
Consistency: 7

RIYL: The Decemberists, Bishop Allen, Architecture in Helsinki

Further Listening: Adem, Peter & the Wolf, She & Him

Place of Origin: Sheffield, England

Instrument/Sounds List: Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Multi-tracked vocal harmonies, Hand claps/foot stomps and other alternative percussion, Glockenspiel, Singing saw, Trumpet, Autoharp, Keyboard, Background strings

Mood Tones:

Season: Spring
Weather: Partly Cloudy
Time of Day: Afternoon

Song Highlights: Christmas TV, Come on Youth, When You Go

Favorite Lyrics:

"Charles, you've killed the choir/ The boy set himself on fire." (from Come on Youth)

"Like a field of rice, I've grown out of view/ An Olympian came to fill the shoes you knew/ Oh, he could reach the sockets that I could never twist/ So now you can cross me off that God-damned list" (from Dance to the Morning Light)

"I like the way that our arguments stop when we fall asleep/ And the way that your body feels when it's wrapped around me." (from Christmas TV)

Other Thoughts:

These recordings have a bit of a schizophrenic quality to them, as half of them are sunny, upbeat, sing-alongs and the other half are soft, simple ballads. The he-said-she-said vocal harmonies used throughout are the most distinctive aspect of these songs, and are often crisp and thematically relevant. The lyrics are always thoughtful and frequently good, though a strict adherence to meter sometimes reveals the limits of their dexterity. They also seem prone to mantra-like repetition, which is used to nice effect at the end of Christmas TV, but sounds forced in other places. So far as I can tell, "Dance to the Morning Light" and "When I Go" are musically almost exactly the same ("When I Go" has a glockenspiel part that "Dance to the Morning Light" lacks), which is unfortunate as both of the songs' conceits are among Slow Club's best, and deserving of more variation. It bears mentioning that I'm generally not very fond of contemporary English music, as much of it strikes me as either derivative or cold, but these recordings are neither, and as such, a welcome reprieve. While not exactly twee per se, there is a certain amount of preciousness to these songs that may turn you off if you're not feeling indulgent.

(This review is meant to encompass both the "Let's Fall Back in Love" EP and the singles "Slow Club," "Me and You" "When I Go" and "Christmas TV")