So, not content with me having to write for my job – and most of my free time – Paddy decided that we should embark on a daily series about our favourite tunes of the moment.
Brilliant.
Thanks Paddy.
It’s entirely your fault if I start drifting into talking about the latest investor sentiment forecasts or, vice versa, if geese and Led Zeppelin start appearing in my work stuff.
ANYWAY – this is called Shambletracks, this is post number two, and it’s my turn.
Today, we’re chatting all kinds of shit about Hannah Lou Clark, a cracker of a songwriter who hails from our own green, Clarkson-ridden shores. She might be known to you in her previous form, Foe, all brightly-coloured wigs, heavy guitars and who I was a bit mixed about seeing at Kendall Calling 2012 (for many of us, the most seminal gig ever – who could forget the Lancashire Hotpot’s Sunday evening barnstormer, eh? EH?)
She’s back around today in an entirely more appealing guise. Paddy and I both have a soft spot for grungey, guitar-lead melancholo-rock (hey look at me, making up words like a real music journalist), especially if topped off by some gorgeous female vocals. HLC (to her friends) is exactly that – her lyrics are simple but evocative, her voice fragile but powered-up and meaty when it matters (that’s the name of mine and Paddy’s burlesque double-act, by the way) (POWERED UP and MEATY WHEN IT MATTERS present BIG HOT DOG ON CAMPUS, A CHILDREN’S TALE).
My favourite track from her three-track EP – Kids in Heat – is a boozy, faded love song, the slurred flirting from the end of a drunken summer evening, all sweet and savage at once. The lyrics are obsessive and tender – ‘let me wipe away your tears/lick the salt from your skin’ – while an open-tuned guitar layers over a washy backdrop. It’s got some elements of the best Smashing Pumpkins creep-o ballads, the dreamiest Warpaint jams and topped up with a pinch of Big Deal.
You can buy the EP online right ‘ere on Bandcamp, as a record or an MP3 (or a FLAC, if you’re a wanker) and she’s doing some tour dates around the country. I can’t bloody wait to see her, and neither should you.