The New Year - "Mayday" [bandcamp / buy LP]
Why are all the days on the calendar represented as squares? Neatly stacked in rows uniformly like bricks in a wall. Some days feel as though they should be shaped like stars or dark clouds. Some are fireworks displays, others are kitten paws or ocean waves. Dodecahedrons and spheres. In their defence, the calendar makers of the world don't know which ones will be the many-sided days that give our lives meaning, so they pretend that time is evenly distributed, that all days take up the same amount of space. But the calendars hanging in our minds are triangular and bouncy; textured and uneven, some days stay and others disappear. Each calendar is different. All they know for sure are the holidays and the transits of the moon.
With their calendrical name The New Year feel as though they should be marking out the even beat of days, square after square. But these are indie rock songs of the olde style (feat. members of Bedhead) and just like much of the quiet end of the late nineties, on repeated listening they reveal their spatial complexity. Their new LP Snow captures days of many shapes. It is an emotional calendar filled with desolation and hope, desire and skepticism, explored with a plain-spoken honesty that is deeply resonant.
Posted by Jeff at May 10, 2017 10:14 PM
and it will begin playing. All songs are also available to download: just right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
