| The Slow Show — Dream Darling (Sept. 30th 2016) |
The Slow Show — Dream Darling (Sept. 30th 2016)
••→ There are few bands who are aware of how potent a weapon silence can be in their music. In a rush to fill all the space on a multi~track studio, the ability to draw a listener closer in by cutting songs back to their bare essentials has been somewhat lost in recent years. As their name implies, The Slow Show have both a magisterial beauty to their sparse songs and the confidence to let their spellbinding four~minute stories find their mark. Rarely since The Blue Nile has a band created such a powerful, fully realised world from what initially appears such a minimal framework.
••→ The Slow Show’s new self~produced second album «Dream Darling» has a hard~won optimism in its 10 graceful songs. It’s music made by five men who, as singer Rob Goodwin explains, have «gone through the typical life~changing experiences that men in their late thirties and forties experience». «Dream Darling» is a collection of songs that any adult who’s lived a little can identify with, even when the loss, new life and break~ups detailed within feel monumental to the people experiencing them.
••→ The night~time studio sessions partly inspired «Dream Darling»’s title. «It’s an album written in the dark and worked on late at night. It feels quite a dreamy record. The alliteration is deliberate — I think alliteration is an official theme now for The Slow Show, following the band name and «White Water» for the first album title. «White Water» was the perfect title for the first album; aggressive and a bit troubled. The alliteration works again on «Dream Darling», as it’s softer and more relaxed, which reflects that we’re more content.» 
Location: Manchester, UK
Album release: September 30, 2016
Record Label: Haldern Pop Recordings / Rough Trade
Duration: 39:37
Tracks:
01 Strangers Now 5:19
02 Hurts 4:25
03 Ordinary Lives 3:59
04 Lullaby 3:37
05 Dry My Bones 3:54
06 This Time 4:20
07 Brawling Tonight 3:05
08 Last Man Standing 3:57
09 Breaks Today 4:39
10 Brick 2:22
The Slow Show:
♦ Rob Goodwin (vocals, guitar)
♦ Fred Kindt (keyboards)
♦ Joel Byrne McCullough (lead guitar)
♦ Chris Hough (drums)
♦ James Longden (bass)
We loved: Wilco, Okkervil River, The National, Cherry Ghost, Elbow, Ryan Adams, Antlers, the Band, Dead Can Dance, Tom Waits.
Review
ROBIN MURRAY FEATURES 30 · 09 · 2016
••→ A full guide to their new album...
••→ The Slow Show have been through it all together.
••→ Five musicians, five friends, the band have grown up together, moved through some of the most important things life can through at you.
••→ And it’s all there in new album ‘Dream Darling’. Out now via Haldern Pop Recordings, the Manchester group are confident enough in themselves to express their own individuality.
••→ To expect some rough hewn moments alongside pop melodicism, some sparse moments alongside lush tapestries.
••→ Fellow Manchester based artist Kesha Ellis guests on two devastating tracks, with The Slow Show drawing on the full depths of their experience.
••→ Clash has obtained the full stream, alongside a track by track guide:
♠ STRANGERS NOW — is about trying to understand how relationships can change so suddenly, dramatically, diversely. How easily people become estranged after such intimacy and reliance on one another. It’s a song about fragility.
♠ HURTS — a song about lonely men and working girls, about obsession, lust and addiction. A stark take on reality.
♠ ORDINARY LIVES — All of our lives changed whilst we were writing ‘Dream Darling’. Ordinary Lives was our way of trying to celebrate those changes no matter how heartbreaking or unfair they seemed. It was our way of finding optimism in loss and euphoria in change.
♠ LULLABY — ‘If this is England that I see, then all your values are foreign to me. And your blue, blue, blue dress on the table reminds me dear. There’s no hope in leaving here. Tonight we’re blind. Tonight we’re falling behind’
♠ DRY MY BONES — is a hopeless, tired promise ‘Don’t cry, I’ll try and dry my Bones in the morning’, one lots of people unfortunately will relate to.
♠ THIS TIME — is a song about new beginnings. It’s an optimistic, hopeful idea, that no one learns anything from things working out but, This time…
♠ BRAWLING TONIGHT — is a dreamlike account of barmy Manchester evenings and film like street fights. It’s a romanticised vision of a city at night and the people in it.
♠ LAST MAN STANDING — a heartbreaking account of somebody being left at the altar on their wedding day.
♠ BREAKS TODAY — is a song about Love and Loss and the end of things. It’s a one sided but genuine account of heartbreak which has a finality that felt very cathartic at the time it was written.
♠ BRICK — is our way to remember a friend and father. :: http://www.clashmusic.com/
About:
♠ “For us, success is to get people really listening. We’ve had audiences fall quiet and people come up to us in tears. It’s strange, but it’s incredibly touching when people react like that” — Rob Goodwin, singer, The Slow Show.
♠ There’s never been a band from Manchester quite like The Slow Show, whose minimal but epic songs swell from gentle piano~led Americana to roaring choruses and string sections. These deeply personal songs about love and death have reduced audiences to hushed silence, even tears. Despite being under the radar in their hometown and only releasing one low~key EP, they have found champions at BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and have played in Europe to large, sold out audiences. The band’s use of choirs and a colliery brass band gives them a distinctly northern sound, but singer Rob Goodwin’s deep, painstaking baritone sounds more like a distant relation of Johnny Cash than anything from the English North West.
♠ Together since 2010, The Slow Show had only played a few gigs before landing their first big break the following year when they were picked by BBC Introducing to support Elbow on BBC Radio 2 Live In Concert at Manchester Cathedral. That led to another breakthrough when Dermot O’Leary’s producer heard the broadcast and asked the band to play on a session on his radio show. In turn, a European agent heard them and asked them to play some unlikely dates abroad. Thus, a band who had barely played a note in their hometown found themselves suddenly unveiling all in European cities such as Zurich and Dresden.
♠ In March 2015, The Slow Show released their startlingly accomplished debut album White Water. Recorded over the past year in Blueprint studios in Manchester, the album will be the first UK release on German label Haldern Pop Recordings, the label formed by the team behind the successful Haldern Pop Festival.
♠ Recording the album has been slow and steady for financial as well as artistic reasons. As Rob explains, “Every time we wanted a string section, we had to save up”, wryly adding that getting the 30~piece brass Glossop Old Band into a studio presented various logistical difficulties. However, they were determined that such exquisitely personal songs could be presented as perfectly as possible.
♠ Indeed, the songs on White Water are deeply intimate, yet with themes that strike a universal chord. The bleakly, brilliantly anthemic Brother — the band’s sole release to date – was inspired by a conversation Rob had with his grandfather, who revealed that in his teens he’d lost his 16~year old brother to cancer, the “saddest moment in my life.” Rob found himself being so moved by this story that the beautifully wistful words — “Let’s go back to football fields and backyard alleyways, before God let you down, boy, and took you away” — just poured out of him.
♠ Another song, Bloodline, is about an adopted family member who went searching for her roots. Augustine is another song about a last goodbye and the stunningly melancholy Bad Day is self~explanatory, although the forthcoming single Dresden (and the “dark tales from the Dresden dens”) has been inspired by their European adventures. There is the deeply affecting God Only Knows (not a Beach Boys cover), which utilizes the brass section for maximum emotional impact and is described by Rob as “a song about growing old with the people you love.”
♠ Throughout White Water, the words are delivered with tenderness, care and empathy. As Paul Weller’s drummer Steve White — a vociferous champion — tells it, The Slow Show are “Manchester’s finest new export: music for the heart and soul.”
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theslowshow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theslowshow/
Website: http://www.theslowshow.co.uk/
♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→
| The Slow Show — Dream Darling (Sept. 30th 2016) |
••→ The Slow Show’s new self~produced second album «Dream Darling» has a hard~won optimism in its 10 graceful songs. It’s music made by five men who, as singer Rob Goodwin explains, have «gone through the typical life~changing experiences that men in their late thirties and forties experience». «Dream Darling» is a collection of songs that any adult who’s lived a little can identify with, even when the loss, new life and break~ups detailed within feel monumental to the people experiencing them.
••→ The night~time studio sessions partly inspired «Dream Darling»’s title. «It’s an album written in the dark and worked on late at night. It feels quite a dreamy record. The alliteration is deliberate — I think alliteration is an official theme now for The Slow Show, following the band name and «White Water» for the first album title. «White Water» was the perfect title for the first album; aggressive and a bit troubled. The alliteration works again on «Dream Darling», as it’s softer and more relaxed, which reflects that we’re more content.»
Album release: September 30, 2016
Record Label: Haldern Pop Recordings / Rough Trade
Duration: 39:37
Tracks:
01 Strangers Now 5:19
02 Hurts 4:25
03 Ordinary Lives 3:59
04 Lullaby 3:37
05 Dry My Bones 3:54
06 This Time 4:20
07 Brawling Tonight 3:05
08 Last Man Standing 3:57
09 Breaks Today 4:39
10 Brick 2:22
The Slow Show:
♦ Rob Goodwin (vocals, guitar)
♦ Fred Kindt (keyboards)
♦ Joel Byrne McCullough (lead guitar)
♦ Chris Hough (drums)
♦ James Longden (bass)
We loved: Wilco, Okkervil River, The National, Cherry Ghost, Elbow, Ryan Adams, Antlers, the Band, Dead Can Dance, Tom Waits.
ROBIN MURRAY FEATURES 30 · 09 · 2016
••→ A full guide to their new album...
••→ The Slow Show have been through it all together.
••→ Five musicians, five friends, the band have grown up together, moved through some of the most important things life can through at you.
••→ And it’s all there in new album ‘Dream Darling’. Out now via Haldern Pop Recordings, the Manchester group are confident enough in themselves to express their own individuality.
••→ To expect some rough hewn moments alongside pop melodicism, some sparse moments alongside lush tapestries.
••→ Fellow Manchester based artist Kesha Ellis guests on two devastating tracks, with The Slow Show drawing on the full depths of their experience.
••→ Clash has obtained the full stream, alongside a track by track guide:
♠ STRANGERS NOW — is about trying to understand how relationships can change so suddenly, dramatically, diversely. How easily people become estranged after such intimacy and reliance on one another. It’s a song about fragility.
♠ HURTS — a song about lonely men and working girls, about obsession, lust and addiction. A stark take on reality.
♠ ORDINARY LIVES — All of our lives changed whilst we were writing ‘Dream Darling’. Ordinary Lives was our way of trying to celebrate those changes no matter how heartbreaking or unfair they seemed. It was our way of finding optimism in loss and euphoria in change.
♠ LULLABY — ‘If this is England that I see, then all your values are foreign to me. And your blue, blue, blue dress on the table reminds me dear. There’s no hope in leaving here. Tonight we’re blind. Tonight we’re falling behind’
♠ DRY MY BONES — is a hopeless, tired promise ‘Don’t cry, I’ll try and dry my Bones in the morning’, one lots of people unfortunately will relate to.
♠ THIS TIME — is a song about new beginnings. It’s an optimistic, hopeful idea, that no one learns anything from things working out but, This time…
♠ BRAWLING TONIGHT — is a dreamlike account of barmy Manchester evenings and film like street fights. It’s a romanticised vision of a city at night and the people in it.
♠ LAST MAN STANDING — a heartbreaking account of somebody being left at the altar on their wedding day.
♠ BREAKS TODAY — is a song about Love and Loss and the end of things. It’s a one sided but genuine account of heartbreak which has a finality that felt very cathartic at the time it was written.
♠ BRICK — is our way to remember a friend and father. :: http://www.clashmusic.com/
♠ “For us, success is to get people really listening. We’ve had audiences fall quiet and people come up to us in tears. It’s strange, but it’s incredibly touching when people react like that” — Rob Goodwin, singer, The Slow Show.
♠ There’s never been a band from Manchester quite like The Slow Show, whose minimal but epic songs swell from gentle piano~led Americana to roaring choruses and string sections. These deeply personal songs about love and death have reduced audiences to hushed silence, even tears. Despite being under the radar in their hometown and only releasing one low~key EP, they have found champions at BBC 6 Music and Radio 2 and have played in Europe to large, sold out audiences. The band’s use of choirs and a colliery brass band gives them a distinctly northern sound, but singer Rob Goodwin’s deep, painstaking baritone sounds more like a distant relation of Johnny Cash than anything from the English North West.
♠ Together since 2010, The Slow Show had only played a few gigs before landing their first big break the following year when they were picked by BBC Introducing to support Elbow on BBC Radio 2 Live In Concert at Manchester Cathedral. That led to another breakthrough when Dermot O’Leary’s producer heard the broadcast and asked the band to play on a session on his radio show. In turn, a European agent heard them and asked them to play some unlikely dates abroad. Thus, a band who had barely played a note in their hometown found themselves suddenly unveiling all in European cities such as Zurich and Dresden.
♠ In March 2015, The Slow Show released their startlingly accomplished debut album White Water. Recorded over the past year in Blueprint studios in Manchester, the album will be the first UK release on German label Haldern Pop Recordings, the label formed by the team behind the successful Haldern Pop Festival.
♠ Recording the album has been slow and steady for financial as well as artistic reasons. As Rob explains, “Every time we wanted a string section, we had to save up”, wryly adding that getting the 30~piece brass Glossop Old Band into a studio presented various logistical difficulties. However, they were determined that such exquisitely personal songs could be presented as perfectly as possible.
♠ Indeed, the songs on White Water are deeply intimate, yet with themes that strike a universal chord. The bleakly, brilliantly anthemic Brother — the band’s sole release to date – was inspired by a conversation Rob had with his grandfather, who revealed that in his teens he’d lost his 16~year old brother to cancer, the “saddest moment in my life.” Rob found himself being so moved by this story that the beautifully wistful words — “Let’s go back to football fields and backyard alleyways, before God let you down, boy, and took you away” — just poured out of him.
♠ Another song, Bloodline, is about an adopted family member who went searching for her roots. Augustine is another song about a last goodbye and the stunningly melancholy Bad Day is self~explanatory, although the forthcoming single Dresden (and the “dark tales from the Dresden dens”) has been inspired by their European adventures. There is the deeply affecting God Only Knows (not a Beach Boys cover), which utilizes the brass section for maximum emotional impact and is described by Rob as “a song about growing old with the people you love.”
♠ Throughout White Water, the words are delivered with tenderness, care and empathy. As Paul Weller’s drummer Steve White — a vociferous champion — tells it, The Slow Show are “Manchester’s finest new export: music for the heart and soul.”
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theslowshow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theslowshow/
Website: http://www.theslowshow.co.uk/
♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→♠♦ψ••→••→