There was this lad at my school called Tom. I didn’t even know him that well, only enough to nod to really, but I think at the time I almost wanted to be him. He had cool clothes, was captain of the school football team, had the latest haircuts and the girls crowded around him, almost constantly.
What he certainly wasn’t interested in was a slightly awkward and shy teenager, who certainly didn’t have the latest haircut, or cool clothes, and instead spent what little money he had on these awful records that weren’t in the charts, and listened to weird stuff on the radio. After a brief effort on my part, we stuck to talking to each other on the football pitch where needed, and nodding where not. I guess it’s just the way we are.
At first I dismissed Aiden Grimshaw as X-Factor fodder (you, know that’s just the way we are I suppose) but on listening to his new track, err, the way we are maybe I’m being unfair. After being knocked out of the 2010 competition the Blackpool singer-songwriter wrote a surprisingly good (to all of us X-Factor ignorers) album, Misty Eye. His new EP is out in September, and this is the first chance we have to look at what Grimshaw has been up to since working with French Producer, Dimitri Tikovo (Charlie XCX, Mikky Ekko, Goldfrapp, The Horrors, Paloma Faith)
Seems that Tikovo has dragged Grimshaw in a new much more electronic direction. It’s a sort of downtempo house feel, with some recognisable classic house sounds, mixed with this wash of sound and this pulsing bass. The track is essentially a good pop song, with Grimshaw waxing lyrical about the imperfections of love, rather than looking up to the school football captain because he attracted the attention of girls and had a haircut like Chris Waddle (yeah, I know). As it weaves and rushes it’s way towards the end, there’s something of the (admittedly, more poppy) James Blake about the track, and that can’t be bad,
In the end, I didn’t want to be like Tom anymore, there were just some things I liked about him. If you looked around, you didn’t need to be the school football captain, with the hair, the clothes and the girls to do things that were, well, captivating. There were a whole load of people who could do that. I might just add Aiden Grimshaw to that list.
https://soundcloud.com/aidengrimshaw/the-way-we-are
http://www.aidengrimshaw.com/
https://twitter.com/Mr_Grimshaw
https://www.facebook.com/aidengrimshawmusic
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