I’m feeling somewhat nostalgic recently and I blame it on the seasons changing. Autumn for me brings a new lease of life, but before that I like to reevaluate my life and indulge in the fact that I’m not on track. I’ve been told it’s a very mid-twenties thing to do and I’m increasingly aware of my own mortality and misery. My current state of mind has an undertone of the aforementioned, but I like to think I’m carrying a lambency encouraged by my nostalgia. An autumn walk to work, with a day dream in full flow. I’m coated with a very small and slightly noticeable glow.
I think about all sorts when autumn hits, but this particular year I’ve been heartened and guided to particular memories through my good friend Sivu. For those of you who haven’t heard him, he’s a delicate songwriter from London who has a rare ability of being able to showcase vulnerability through the tiniest of outputs. For me, this trait is incomparable and inimitable. It’s something most artists lose through ego, arrogance, fatigue and desperation. Sivu is untouched and that is what makes him so perfect. His album Something on High is a 40 minute example of this particular feature.
Sivu is particularly nostalgic for me as I first met James (Sivu’s real name) when I was 15. I put his first band on in a terrible, run down pub in a housing estate in Newmarket with my friend John. He played the bass and the band blew me away. I bought a t-shirt from him and Adam (director of most of Sivu’s music videos) and we remained friends ever since. When I was 16/17 we played endless shows together in the backroom of a pub in Cambridge. The first five shows, 10 people came. By the tenth show 20 people had turned up. And as the momentum gained, the shows began to sell out and we were the house bands for the frustrated 15-20 year olds of Cambridge and surrounding areas. It wasn’t Sex Pistols at the Free Trade Hall, but I like to think it was our own very minor exception. My friends (who are now in a band called Bloody Knees) would usually start the show, then we would follow (2 members of this band went on to create Real Life Charm) and then James’ band. We would stay after the show had finished, drink in the car park until someone complained and then went go our separate ways with the full intention of doing one the month after. I’m not entirely sure what It was about those shows which makes me so wide eyed and wistful, but I’m starting to think it’s because we were all there for the same reasons. Without any industry, Soho enthusiast in a suit to bring us down, we all showed up to this venue to be together. To play very loud and very rubbish music so that our friends could get drunk and sing back at us. We had no agenda, no ego, no arrogance and no desperation. It was just a handful of friends with absolutely no anchor, just an assumption for a future we may have.
The pride I feel when I listen to James’ album is something I’m experiencing on a regular with a lot of friends’ bands. I’m at an age where a lot of the people I grew up playing with are playing Wembley and reaching the top 20’s – but with James, the biggest rush of joy I feel inside my chest outweighs any previous experience. I’m almost positive that it’s because he has retained that genuine vulnerability he always had. That in an industry of gimmicks, my good friend who told me whiskey would soothe my voice (it never did) and drove miles to play bass for my band when we had no one else retained that beauty. It’s easy to read this article and think I’m bias, but I’m not. That beauty and that genuineness are there for you all to discover. All you need to do is press play.
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