What A Surprise

Sometimes songs will reappear in your head for no reason. You'll start humming a tune, and only recognise what that song is a minute later. I love it when this happens, it's a true affirmation of loving a song, that it's buried almost subconsciously into you. For me, today, it was "Midnight Surprise" by Lightspeed Champion.

To create an epic folk song is no mean feat, but Dev Hynes managed it and then some, the minutes fly by without warning. The amount of times I've listened to it and suddenly found myself on the next track, 10 minutes later, is astonishing. By using country and Western slide guitar, traditional acoustic guitar, strains of violin, classical piano and judicious sprinklings of background Hammond organ he's created a tapestry of a song, flowing like a story from one verse to another. The addition of Emmy The Great's vocals in the mid-section accompanied by pizzicatto violin plucks is just lovely too. There's almost too much to talk about within it, and yet it holds together so well. Would it be impetuous to say that this is the folk "Paranoid Android"? Probably, but I will anyway. And that's two Radiohead comparisons in two posts, I really have to tone that down...

Lightspeed Champion - Midnight Surprise