This morning I woke before seven, as my girlfriend dressed for work. Wrenched again from dozing by the slam of the front door, I swung myself from the mattress, thought about the wanton biscuit destruction and Technicolor brightness of my childhood Saturday mornings, the leaping in my chest upon drifting lazily from sleep, the hours of epileptic cartoon punch-ups and their later reenactments on my parents sundrenched lawn, and the the evolution of these things into fruit, caffeine, hangovers, gum-spotted pavement, &c.
Sun spotted the carpet through the bedsheet I’ve tacked across my bedroom’s broken blinds. And dancing in the raw ’round my empty flat to this, the latest cut from Durham’s Healing Powers, Monday and its pale denizens seem like a petty insignificance. The band are aptly named – Weirdos at Work builds on the template laid out on last year’s Weird Dreams Forever, stacking its guitars into roaring, plangent infinity, charging around with all the joy and abandon it’s so easy to tell yourself you’re no longer capable of. Rarely does a band with such a terrifying vocal scrape sound this glad to be alive, like they’re grabbing their art with calloused hands and wringing every last drop of fun to be had from it. I have no idea what Weirdos at Work is about, of course (deciphering its screams has proven largely fruitless), but I know that I’ve twisted through its one-and-a-half breathless minutes at least five times so far today, and I didn’t stop grinning once.
Healing Powers’ forthcoming 7-inch is out soon on Wolf Town DIY and Get Into It Recs