FMS: Because We're Dead -or- How To Make Your Song Sound Like A Kid You Want To Slap

This weeks free gift from iTunes is the musical equivalent of an ADHD stricken six year old. Who has a rockabilly quiff. And is having a lo-fi love affair with an anti-folk pedophile. And much like that child's parents you'll find yourself torn between bemusement at their antics but also wondering where the hell it all went so wrong.

The track is titled 'Because We're Dead,' a piece of rockabilly tinged folk rock by Sheffield based duo Slow Club, consisting of Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor. Slow Club are on the famous indie label Moshi Moshi Records and share the lo-fi alterna-folk sound of many of their contemporaries such as Tilly and the Wall and early Kate Nash.

The song is an odd beast of guitars and vocals that have been heavily drenched in slap-back reverb, which causes that famed stuttering effect of 50's era rock songs (think Gene Vincent or 50's Elvis) all backed with a stomping and rolling snare drum beat. So far, so cutely hyper rockabilly.

But then!

They decide to stop all the music in the middle of the beat. The song has a tendency to suddenly crash out on its own energy and randomly lose its rhythm. As a result of this, the huge climax the insistent nature of the music feels as though it's building up to is never really allowed to come, mainly because the song is too busy running around like a sugar-fueled backwoods Sheffield bastard child colliding with a glass door it didn't notice was closed.

The lyrics are cute but nothing particularly special. The harmonies traded off between Watson and Taylor are quite pretty but I find their strong Sheffield accents to grate slightly against the more distinctly American instrumentation.

But then!

Almost as if they're aware of this problem, they suddenly swap the entire feel of the song over to an average indie number for the final thirty second crescendo filled with stop and start guitars and 'WOOOOO-OOOOH-OOOAAAAHS' in all directions.

But then!

They cap it off with a little country harmony arpeggio! Ho-ho, Slow Club! You tricked me! First I thought you were try hard rockabilly hipsters, then I thought you were actually Indie rockers playing around in Rockabilly's garden and now I think you're just shit. Bra-fucking-vo.

-Dashiell 'Because I Wish You Were Dead' Asher

Image courtesy of Moshi Moshi Records