Meet Me In St Louis are basically my only musical regret. Back in 2006 as a student up north I wanted to go and see Yndi Halda supporting them and Secondsmile at the Brudenell Social Club. The weather was crappy and other than Yndi Halda I knew none of the bands on the bill, so I gave it a miss. A year and a bit later I learned that they had split up at their gig in Norwich, which wasn’t far to travel. That day, the day after they split, my friend Richard decided to send me I’ve Got Knives In My Eyes I’m Going Home Sick. 60 plays on loop later I realised that I’d missed two opportunities to see this magnificent band, and to this day I get a ping of sadness every so often thinking about it.
Well, with that out the way, here’s the bit I probably should have started with: Meet Me In St. Louis were a post-hardcore band from Guilford who made use of odd times and aggressive bites of guitar, as well as wonderfully complex tapped clean guitars, all topped with Toby Hayes‘ brilliant songwriting and raw delivery.
Their first demo Promise Me That We’ll Never Be Like Them. I Don’t Want To Wind Up Like That. Relax, Baby. We’re Going To Wind Up Like Us… was a fairly lo-fi recording, but showed their musicianship and their desire to create something new completely unlike anything else around early on, Cory Feldman starting with a fiery of music, before the mid-part quietens down temporarily with the vocals repeating “don’t blame yourself, it’s not your fault”.
First actual release And With The Right Kind Of Eyes You Can Almost See The High Water Mark Where The Wave Hit The Shore And Rolled Back picked up the production quality quite a bit, but kept with the same complex music. The Kid Who Had His Ear Slapped By The Druggist is my highlight of the EP, the section after the “Can I be your favourite sunshine blonde” lyric with the fast paced odd timed distorted guitars followed by a burst of picked clean guitar before going back to the guitar attack just hits me hard every time.
If you haven’t noticed by now, or don’t happen to be a film buff, Meet Me In St. Louis like to use film references a lot in their titles, the EP’s both being lines from films, as well as every song title from all their releases (except Cory Feldman).
Their one album Variations On Swing is easily in my top five albums of all time. It just gets better and better throughout, starting strong with The Torso Was Severed In Mid Thorax and ending with the quiet instrumental You’re Doomed. I’m pretty glad I didn’t have to review this album at the time because it’s pretty much impossible to talk about the songs; they’re clever, they’re unpredictable and you need to listen them to understand that. I’ve Got Knives In My Eyes, I’m Going Home Sick is quite frankly a masterpiece, the dualing picked guitars and the sudden bursts of distortion from the intro right through to the complicated mid section, and with the faster guitar layers towards the end, all kept together by the brilliant lyrics of Toby, “The static and the flicker, shows me words and pictures. Am I delusional? Is 20 hours walking distance?”, “She has a confession, she wants to get better, so I’ll make a token effort. As we get closer the room gets smaller, and that’s all she wants, progress”. I would say this is one of the few songs I’ve ever heard that I would declare perfect.
Unfortunately as mentioned previously the band fell apart between 2007 and 2008, first Toby leaving the band, and then the band stopping completely in February 2008 announcing their end at a gig in Norwich. The band members did carry on and do some truly interesting music though; Toby started a solo career under the guise Shoes And Socks Off who spent the last few years recording at an alarming pace and touring the UK before finally putting the name to bed this October. The style was like an acoustic take on MMISL; the lyrics still intensely clever, the guitar parts fairly irregular. Bassist Lewis played in the pop group Colour (who, okay, weren’t necessarily pop with their math rock influences), who unfortunately have also since split up. Lewis, Oli and Paul announced in 2009 that they would be forming Tropics, who have an album out in the near future.
Meet Me In St Louis were a phenomenal band who aren’t really done any justice by mere words, so you’ll be pleased to know the whole of their album Variations On Swing is available for free download on the NME website here. If you like it, buy it over at Big Scary Monsters.
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