As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing better than finding a friend who (a) loves music and is always seeking out new stuff and (b) can be counted upon for good recommendations because their taste in music dovetails nicely with your own.
So when my friend Jono recommended London Grammar a few weeks back, I wasn’t surprised to discover I loved their sound – back in the day, we were both into trip hop, and London Grammar feels like Portishead met Florence and the Machine late one night in the studio.
But it’s this video for “Wasting My Young Years” that I can’t stop watching.
I remember years ago hearing an 1890 wax cylinder recording of Tennyson reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade” – it had a strange, eerie quality, as though Tennyson was somehow breaching the space-time continuum to speak to the future, but the connection was bad and everyone on his end died before two-way communication could be established.
The Shot with something like 600+ pinhole cameras, the video has the same eerie feeling – I’d say ‘haunting’ if that wasn’t already overused as an adjective for every female operatic performance.
I know, I know – this is altogether too much expository dialogue and who the hell compares pop music videos to Tennyson poetry?
Just watch it for yourself.