Kadhim's totally hot album of the week #3
Slow Club - Paradise (2011)
When it comes to Twitter, musicians usually have one of two personalities:
- No personality – SINGLE OUT NOW!!! yawn
- Uber-kick-ass insight into their awesome psyche – “DEAR LORD RYAN GOSLING GETT ON MY FACE”.
Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor falls into the latter category (indeed, the second example is one of her tweets). Her Twitter account is a massive middle finger to the twee image that their first album constructed. Without turning this review into a convoluted love letter to her, is there a girl you’d want to hang out with more than one who tweets: “Why isn’t my bbm working I’m trying to send a picture of my dick (shaped bruise) to my friend Stacey this is an OUTRAGE”
Slow Club’s second album, Paradise, is less a ‘middle finger’ and more a ‘slightly cheeky two-fingered salute’ to their aforementioned twee image. Bandmate Charles Watson has been relegated to guitar and backing vocals, and while they still write upbeat indie-folk love songs, there’s more texture, complexity, and humanity. If their first album is a sweet stickman drawing, their second is more like the dense palette that adorns its album cover.
Underpinning all of this is Rebecca Taylor. The same girl who tweets, “100 PINTS OF WINE PLEASE BAR KEEP”, also writes beautiful phrases like “A chauffeur-driven dream” and sings them with the sensitivity of a neutrino detector (Zing!). Which makes her pretty awesome in my books. Oh dear, I’ve turned this review into a convoluted love letter after all.
If you get bored this weekend, drink 100 pints of wine and tweet me from the hospital @kadhimshubber. Better still, photoshop a picture of Ryan Gosling sitting on Taylor’s face and tweet her @SLOWCLUBREBECCA.
