Oh I've done it again haven't I? Just carried on without giving a mention to what I was writing about. They never taught me how to do that in journalism school. Actually I never went to journalism school, can you tell? Ha. Ha. Haaa—. Anyway, I'm writing about JAWS, a band from Birmingham (UK not US), and part of the fabricated/joke scene 'B-Town' (incl. Peace & Swim Deep) – though it's always the way that, without approval from artists purportedly "in" the scene, all scenes, all genres, are just fabrications – but I can see how it's a joke: I live near a place called Kingston and we call it K-town, jokingly. Not that I'm in any sort of band or anything.
But with writing about music you kinda have to dig for clues, make connections & assumptions, and come to conclusions – if they're widely accepted enough, they become gospel. For instance, none of these B-town (I even hate writing it, ok?) bands have a very similar sound, yet NME was able to see that the scene "seemed to roll out of bed, insular and uncontrived, smirking at its own in-jokes." Fine. Yet there is a waft of irony in the use of "uncontrived" – finding these differences, purposefully looking for them, is a journalistic contrivance in itself. How we are endlessly at odds with ourselves.
Now, I would like to forget about that and say hello to 'Think Too Much, Feel Too Little' by the eight-legged JAWS.
First thing that struck me was its vague similarity to something else, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, till I realised it was 'Every Breath You Take' by The Police. It kinda follows the same chord progression and has that same plinky palm-muted pattern, though in the JAWS song its a twining of two guitar patterns that seem to shimmer-glitter in the lightbulb-heavy flavours of a post-party mood. Indeed, the song's lyrics, sung with a nicely reverbing nonchalant lilt, spin a tale of dimly lit dancing interrupted by the end-of-the-night's awakening; a romance dream with splashes of colour and the syncopated bassline oozing groove with the slow-sway fruity drum crunch and blissful anti-triumph in this half-lament of a track – "We get it, we get it, it's over / I'll go back to being alone…" – full-stopped with a crescendo of reality, drowning out the star-dots of hazy memory and love-in-passing.
Lovely stuff. If I'm late on it then pffffffffft whatever, but I'm glad that I found this song, whose title is quite similar to a line from Charlie Chaplin's speech in his film, The Great Dictator.
- Some comments on the song mentioned an album or EP or something soon, but I don't know anything. Best thing is to follow these guys on the links below – if you like what you hear, of course.
Like JAWS on Facebook
Listen to JAWS on SoundCloud
Visit JAWS official site
Follow JAWS on Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment