May 7, 2002
Electric Soft Parade : Empty At The End
Our Single Of The Week is "just about perfect for rainy spring days"...
Paranoic indie-anoraks they may be in print, but don’t ever say Brighton’s spindly blues brothers Tom and Alex White can’t write a tune. Song structure and choreography are their slaves; both ‘Empty At the End’ and its bubblegum accompaniment ‘This Given Line’ jerk and kick with intense control. And what with Gaz Coombes on permanent vacation, ESP have done the decent thing and produced the best mutant ‘Grass single since ‘Moving’, except with a distinctive added gloom.
"All I know is that no one is my friend/And it’s empty at the end/So let’s start again" groans Alex before the most joyous space-guitar solo in recent memory. Brighton’s never sounded so downcast. For rainy Spring days
it’s just about perfect.
Jason Fox
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