This feeling is reminiscent of the music of local five-piece synth-pop outfit Clubfeet, whose second album, the remarkable Heirs & Graces, was released earlier this year.
I posit my theory about the feeling of Clubfeet’s music to Sebastian Cohen, the lead vocalist and guitarist, and he cheerily agrees.
“Yeah!” he exclaims. “That kind of sums up our style, well done! I guess that rings true to me, and rings true for the other guys as well. A sense of melancholy and nostalgia. Obviously, some of the songs are about that subject, and others are about being young: the loss of youth, and being nostalgic about that. I guess [they’re about] anyone’s connection to the world – it’s a melancholic, nostalgic weird happy-sad place, you know?”
Cohen knows about nostalgia, having moved here from his beloved Cape Town roughly seven years ago. Luckily for him, though, one of his childhood chums (Clubfeet’s Yves Roberts) was already here waiting for him – and the rest, they say, is history.
“Myself and Yves, we grew up together in a place called Kimberley, which is a small mining town,” Cohen explains. “And we actually started making music together back then. We went through school, then he emigrated to Australia – and in a couple of years I followed! And then we met Monty Cooper and, yeah … everything just happened from there. We started writing songs together and that’s how Gold On Gold came about. We’d written these songs and we thought, ‘Maybe we should put it out!’ And…we did, and everything happened from there!”
After releasing Gold On Gold, something interesting and quite unexpected happened – they got a fan in a certain influential music media site. Their debut had been picked up by boutique label Illusive Sounds, who released the LP in America. “And somehow,” Cohen adds, “it got reviewed on Pitchfork and it saw a lot of blog action – and yes, we were very surprised by all of that!” He laughs at the memory. “And we went over and played a couple of shows at (American festival) CMJ, which were amazing!”
Ah, good old Pitchfork. “Yeah!” he agrees. “It’s amazing how much influence they have! Even if you’re a Pitchfork hater, which there are a lot of these days, you still can’t deny the fact that they do have a lot of sway and influence!”
Pitchfork certainly got it right when they reviewed Gold On Gold, giving it a total score of 7.7. Basically, it was a debut that got it all right: from its rather debonair air of sophistication to its subtle tongue-in-cheek humour (a Heathers-inspired take on Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It)?) to its simple power of having some inspiring beats that seduced and were fun.
Heirs & Graces takes that jubilant formula and builds on it subtly. So how did Cohen and his mates approach it as opposed to how they built Gold On Gold? Were there any lessons they learned, or was there anything they did differently? Cohen ponders for a moment. “I think the two processes were different right from the onset,” he offers. “[With} Gold On Gold there was no plan – it came from a place of just wanting to write songs with these people and then quickly putting it out without a plan!
“Heirs & Graces, there was a lot of planning and strategy that went into it, because there was a record label involved! So yeah, quite a different process from the onset. But I think in terms of songwriting, there was definitely a pressure involved, a pressure to write. So we were sort of writing with a motive!”
Motive or not, the result has been a follow-up that improves upon its predecessor; one that maintains what worked in the debut but also adds its own special elements. Case in point is the third single from Heirs & Graces, the delightfully groovy yet subtly wistful Cape Town. Its corresponding video is rather lovely and mysterious, taking place at a party of epic proportions, cut with lovely views from Table Mountain as Cohen breathes the vocals, “Everybody buy me a drink/It’s my birthday … yeah.” Must have been nice to be in Cape Town for the filming, I mention.
“Yeah, it kind of just happened that way, we never planned it,” Cohen tells me. “I go back to Cape Town at least once a year, and it just so happened that I had planned this trip pretty much close to [the time of filming]. I think the original idea was to shoot some stock footage in Cape Town and then we could use that footage over here.”
But once there, the decision was made to turn the video into a tribute to the city Cohen loves so very much – proving yet again the pull of nostalgia that is the core of this very special band.
BY THOMAS BAILEY
