There’s a humanly passive fascination with lawlessness.
Dreaming of social middle-ground whilst avoiding the subject matter to hand, we live in a no-man’s land of harmonious class; a nation where Cowboys and Vape-Wrangler’s roam over the glassy-eyed disillusions of societal imbalance, stealing hearts and breaking bank. When a 21st Century outlaw relies on “orange juice and white bread” to maintain their weight in gold, the equilibrium of existence seems to fall right through our supposedly progressive, cracks in time.
John Wayne spoke of men having to do what men have to do but he’d never ridden a horse in a pair of trackies nor come face-to-face with PREGOBLIN. Looking for alternative meaning in the heartland of Capital misstructure, the Londoner’s ‘Gangsters’, a morally ambiguous quest to pay rent, hideouts from Mr Taxman and all the Cash n’ Carry hell that follows.
The track, and its video accompaniment, is a starkly traversed homage to romanticised realism. Fighting the powers that be whilst constantly whistling in the wind, the duo’s conscientious gnarling of Americana-uplift is soundtracked as euphorically as it is dispossessed and bleak.
Building up their armour out of promised illusions, like a deck of cards discovered buried in the corner of a greasy Spoons, they croon onwards – forward thinking, backwards drifting; a Knight of Pentacles searching for situational meaning in a kingdom where the sweet, sweet grass of Brixton Hill loom ever-presently in the not so far distance.
‘Gangsters’ is getting sticky fingers from a can of condensed milk and synthetic prospects. It’s lying on the cold hard episodic tiles of life, starring a flickering lightbulb dead in its captor’s-coils whilst whisking the mind away to a land of synths and stallions.
There’s no shame in where you’ve come from, but change has got to be imminent.
The brand new issue of So Young is out now. It’s sold out in print but you can read the digital edition below.