London 4-piece Legss come back bigger with ‘Hyde Park Coroner’ produced by Nave Studios’ Alex Greaves
Legss don’t have it in their limbs to produce conventional music and their newest release ‘Hyde Park Coroner’ is another example of why this is a beautiful thing. Representing the only unsigned players in what NPR has labelled ‘The Post-Brexit New Wave’, the tell-it-like-it-is mantra of this four-piece demands you sit down and listen.
The Hyde Park Coroner hits you immediately with mashing guitar, rolling drums and crunchy bass, all led by Green’s tuneful growl that moves between rhythmic shouts and tender moans lamenting the human condition.
“A welterweight, advantageous, snakeoil coroner, drunk on yesterday’s sacramental wine, presides over a ghostly whodunnit, fit with harmonic episodes of subterranean love, and a synth line to raise the dead to.” Lead singer Ned Green’s description of the song pulls back the curtain on the ‘functional’ world we’ve convinced ourselves we live in, melded together with the reverberating production of Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, BDRMM and LICE).
What’s special about this song is the way it manages to tell a picturesque story in the space of three minutes. ‘I swam in the Serpentine…’ – immediately you’re transported to the banks of West London’s well-known park, but something isn’t right. Everything is upside down and inside out – ‘what’s better than a café with the view of a cemetery?’ As the tempo ducks between lurching gritty chords and a whirlwind bridge, the question: ‘did you have a good day, great day or both?’ seems ridiculous, but that’s the point.
But what about the melodic change that lifts us from our sunken blues towards the end of the song? Unsurprisingly, this moment of respite is short-lived before the band reminds us of our ugly destiny, but if ‘Hyde Park Coroner’ is anything to go by, Legss themselves might just escape this fate.
Photo by Will Reid
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