Are you ready for a surrealist gallop through the Irish countryside? Enter W. H. Lung’s charming Pearl In The Palm, the first single from the band’s upcoming album Vanities. The track is accompanied by a delightfully bizarre video for a wildly irreverent track that speaks to nonconformity, creative personal expression and spontaneous living.
Pearl in the Palm weaves together pulsing synths, galloping drums, and fervently intense vocals. The band owes a nod to motorik-driven Krautrock as much as they do Future Islands, The War On Drugs, and White Lies, but their infectious playfulness is a heaping portion of decadent 90s psychedelia.
“We wanted to move away from easing people in and grab them by the heart straight away,” reflects singer Joe Evans. “I reflected on how we played live shows and romanticised about launching onto the stage in a bundle of energy and starting the party, no messing. The directness comes from making music more intuitively, and more from a place of fun.”
“The story of the video speaks to that connection with nature, so everything was shot outside, in the rain, in the cold, in the quiet of the early morning,” says Tom Sharkett. “There’s water, there’s forest, there’s bog, there’s a donkey…I think there’s also something in the video about…flowing with the unexpected. Like, a balloon? I’ll have a day out with it!”
Named after a Chinese supermarket in their native Manchester, W.H. Lung is comprised of singer Joe Evans, guitarist Tom Sharkett, drummer Alex Mercer Main, vocalist and synth player Hannah Peace, and Chris Mulligan on bass and synths.
It’s not the first time farm animals have made a synth pop video cameo – Pearl In The Palm is a cheeky nod to the suits in muck-stomping scenes in the classic Eurythmics Sweet Dreams video, but W.H. Lung kicks the video into that vein of completely off the wall music videos of the 90s: gleefully hanging off tractors, local charm, cavorting about in abandoned cottages, a field reunion: the Technicolour imagery brings to mind Beck, Flaming Lips and Forest For The Trees. The glorious video was filmed in January in Ireland’s bucolic counties Offaly and Laois.
“Another source of inspiration for the album was getting out into nature,” Joe reveals. The core songwriting duo had moved from Manchester to Todmorden before lockdown and enjoyed the Calder Valley scenery. “Sitting with and walking in the abundance of the natural world has fed into some of the playfulness and light spirit of the album….Lockdown gave me the time to pour work into myself and out came this wonderful album…a direct reflection of creative flow brought on by the space given to us.”
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