Photo: Joyve NG
South London indie band Childhood have put out their first new music in three years with new soul/psych cut 'Californian Light' taken from second album out July 21. Listen on Gigwise below.
The band first came into our attention with reverb-drenched performances supporting Palma Violets across the UK in 2012. Managed by Elastica's Paul Jones, who also manages SHAME, they were seen as a band with huge potential from many industry insiders.
Sure enough, they came good with debut album, Lacuna. It’s an album characterized shoegaze guitars, 80s pop synth stabs, and drums that always give space and ride with the dynamics of expressive singer Ben Romans Hopcraft. Singles 'As I Am', 'Blue Velvet', and 'Solemn Skies' gained them notoriety among indie lovers and the live performances blossomed with every passing year.
However, ill-content to call this debut album their high-water mark, Hopcraft and co headed out to Atlanta to record what would be their second album soon after they finished touring. They started posting on social media with updates of them in the studio teasing that a release would come fairly quickly after.
But they took their time. Among other things Romans Hopcraft started collaborating with Fat White Family singer Saul Adamczewski and Sean Lennon on Insecure Men - with whom he is still heavily involved with.
Nearly three years after their debut, the second album is ready and will be released by Marathon Records on 21 July. Taken from the record, which is named Universal High, is new single 'Californian Light'. It sees them shed their shoegaze skin and veer into a soul-infused psych pop direction. - and it's one that works.
In the video, premiereing on Fader, Romans-Hopcraft is wearing a vintage 70s suit, strolling around East Street Market just south of Elephant & Castle, London, dancing and hanging out with market traders. The location, near to Childhood HQ, is one of the least gentrified areas of South London with a strong sense of community and vibrant feel.
Of the track, Romans-Hopdraft told The Fader: “It was written as an ode to my relationships that define me as a person in London. The 'light' itself is a reference to an experience me and a bunch of my best friends had in San Francisco.
“What we thought was an inviting celestial light, whilst we ran around inebriated one evening, actually turned out to be a beaming light from two cop cars, with their guns pointed directly at us. This deception of when something you feel is eternal and magnificent, turns out to be a brutal sobering reality, was a notion I used to sum up a lot of the relationships I've had in London over the years." Listen to it now.
