I almost missed this one: the envelope has been split and damaged in transit and arrived in a poly bag with an apology from Royal Mail. Tucked in a corner of said envelope, its presence not immediately apparent once I’d removed the CDs and accompanying press releases, was a credit-card sized piece of card with a download code for ‘Midnight’. How it came to be there, given that the single looks to have been released last May, I’m not sure, but I’m glad I did spot it before sticking the envelope out for recycling.
The accompanying blurb explains that the song was inspired by ‘a re-reading of the John Le-Carre novel “The Spy who came in from the Cold”’ and tries to ‘capture the sense of melancholy and unease caused by serious sleep depreciation and the abuse of alcohol described in the opening chapter of Le-Carres novel’.
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Its sparse acoustic arrangement, laced with sad-sounding cello, in combination with a laid-back – or bone-tired – smoky vocal certainly conjure a sense of the strung-out, separated existence that only booze and sleep deprivation can give rise to. Kinda dreamy, but also kinda tense, it’s a decent enough tube that suggests the album, ‘Leamas’ might we worth a listen.
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