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It’s second time lucky for fans of boy-girl duo Slow Club; the band are finally performing at The Duchess after illness forced them to cancel their whole UK tour in April. The much awaited tour will see Slow Club preview new material from their second album Paradise, which has been described by The Times as a “revelation”.
Formed in Sheffield in 2006, their debut album “Yeah So” was a moving and joyful affair, with lyrics of such a paradoxical mix of both the funny and melancholy. “I definitely want to be a rapper” sings Rebecca Taylor, “But I’m just a Northern girl from where nothing really happens. And the bones inside my shins are crumbling”. It’s these endearing qualities that heralded such descriptions as “uplifting, catchy, interesting, joyous, and heartbreaking”, but there was one more adjective that seemed to follow reviews of the album around like a well-meaning but disconcerting and unwanted stalker. That word was “twee”, and no-one seemed to deride such disgust from it as Slow Club themselves.
Two years on, the band’s second album ‘Paradise’ is a heavier and darker offering, luckily without rejecting everything that made the band recognizable. Songs like “You, Earth or Ash” demonstrate a poignant maturity of singing as well as songwriting. Taylor declared in an interview with ‘Music Broke My Bones’ that “The new album isn’t a total F-U-we-aren’t-twee, but it was made with that in the back of our minds, and hopefully it will silence the really rubbish writers who just copy and paste what one person said in 2007”. Oops…
And so the excited apprehension builds as Slow Club prepare to preview their new material. They were around 17 when they penned “Yeah So” and now with that beautifully youthful debut paired with a new album that has been described as “a snapshot of burgeoning adulthood”, this gig promises to be something special. It has not quite sold out on writing this, and in such an intimate venue as The Duchess, it would be a crime not to check them out.
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