It’s always satisfying when the opening twenty seconds of a new track are instantly impressive and truly indicate the quality of the next however-many minutes, (in this case five). ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ by Liverpool trio Glue Moon begins with synthy twangs, made emphatic by pauses echoing with reverb, then slowly introduces warmer tones. So hypnotising are the melodies that the arrival of Will Hall’s dulcet vocals is a bit of a surprise. Having said that, the progression in composition is very natural, with no breaks or any prediction of what’s going to happen.
There’s no main element here, all of the different lines weave together in a way that sounds so natural despite all of the electronic instrumentation; this is further emphasised by the soft vocals in their otherwise synthetic surroundings. The entire composition is intricately crafted; the harmonies from Paul Brown being especially sweet, as well as the guitar line from Owen Lennon slipping in to close the track. My only qualm here is the fade out at the end. Insert huge generalisation here: a fade out to me means you can’t be bothered to end a song properly, but in this case it does make sense. I still don’t like it though.
They have an interesting take on mortality; mostly expressing their masochistic view of the world in ‘you were saying look up above / even those lights will burn out / well I wanna see that happen.’ This pessimism is really quite addictive as they successively repeat their mantra ‘you were saying you don’t want to live forever’, rendering them perhaps counter-intuitively hopeful, like they’re trying to trick us into reverse psychology. Quite clever really. In both detail and on the whole.
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