We’re all the same but the mindset differentiates.
Conditioned to commodify cynicism in a circumstantial era where “scenes” appear faster than a patch sewn on to a Harrington jacket, and humour is a rarity even though all anyone really wants to do is put on a dressing gown, struggle to slide open the glass of our flat-share’s balcony, make a shit cup of coffee and blast ‘Parklife’ at 11am. What happens when a band of five decide to break the mould by simplifying it, and then making it more accessible?
Grabbing the keys to the inner-workings of an industrious mastermind who, unlike Oz, acknowledges the ironic genius in his self-destructive empire of glut and groove yet still, refuses to progress… there’s arguably many a trick to unlock the doors to success and equally, a seemingly endless supply of Andrew Savage’s who’d be alert enough for the task but when push comes to six-stringed-shove… few, plucky-purveyors are as instantly likeable as Liverpool’s Courting.
As the group release ‘Popshop!’, their latest single via Nice Swan Records, “Over, and over, and over again” we’re reminded that life really is too short to “sell-out” to those who’ll never fully invest and ‘Popshop’, in all its adolescent crank, is a typographic narrative filled in with a fresh pack of Crayola.
This is no ‘Art in Transit’, waiting around for some big-shot to fast-track the illusion of growth, this is doing what you want to do, when you want and with whom you wish to do so; as if the very concept of creative- observance is to form a thickly drawn outline of self-confessed perfectionism whilst our insides, the wiry substance to which nostalgia mixes with modern mundanity to form a fiery rebellion of marbled gunk cause an additional U-turn away from the illusion that creativity is only for the ‘Faber-Castell’ privileged.
Stick it to the man and stay true to yourselves. Such is the way of Courting.
Header photo by Marieke Macklon
The brand new issue of So Young is out now. It’s sold out in print but you can read the digital edition below.