Slow Club - Paradise - Album Review

Album Rating:

9

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Slow Club - Two Cousins

Slow Club - Two Cousins

Picture your perfect day. Close your eyes and try to image how it plays out. Is the sun warming your chest while you squint to take in the glory of an untouched beach? Do you taste the dry but sweet wine as it passes your lips filling your stomach with its sensual glow? Are you dressed in a plushy whale costume in a seedy hourly hotel room with a dominatrix name Roxy who is dressed like Capt. Ahab? It doesn't really matter what you deem to be perfect, because if you let the interplay of Slow Club's Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor vocals enter your ear holes you will feel the sonic equivalent of that perfection.

On their album Paradise, Slow Club slowly and powerfully unveil their magical brilliance. Paradise is the type of album that is so good it causes you to put it away after the first listen because, god damn this fucker is intimidating. It is an undertaking to absorb it all, as you'll be stiff the next day and you'll have to build up to spending any sustained time with it.

Once you're over that hump you will understand what runners talk about when they say you get a runner's high. There is something sublime and ultimately peaceful about Paradise. It starts to feel like a second skin after a while. Rebecca Taylor's voice rattles around in your torso, eventually finding space and making you richer for your patience. Just listen to Hackney Marsh and let it wash over you. All you can think about is that fucking voice, it consumes you, and just as you are about to crumble into a heaping mass, that saxophone break comes in and offers you a new lease on life.

There are a gang of moments like this. Tracks like You, Earth of Ash and Horse Jumping pop up all over Paradise. They are gorgeous and lush, and then somehow, when you least expect it they kick it up a notch and cause your heart to explode in a joyous ache that you only feel in the hands of a rare few.

Then there is Never Look Back. Holy shit this song is glorious. It's a bluesy little joint, sounding sparse even through the melodic hook, sensual vocal interplay, and distant guitars. Then, out of nowhere Rebecca Taylor lets her voice own you, it's raw and powerful, it is the kind of anguish that would destroy a lesser singer but she harnesses it and changes your life.

Slow Club is fucking epic.

You can purchase Paradise here.

Slow Club are playing a few US dates:

11/03 – Mercury Lounge - NY, NY Tickets

11/04 – Rock Shop w/ Frankie & The Heartstrings - Brooklyn, NY Tickets

11/06 – The Echo - Los Angeles, CA Tickets

11/08 – Troubador w/ First Aid Kit - Los Angeles, CA Tickets