PARADE - Lightning Hit the Trees Review
A hazy, genre-bending debut from one of the UK’s most enigmatic new collectives.
The underbelly of the music your dad likes lays in the pubs and corners of cities and towns full of creative young people. A tale as old as time, perhaps, especially with the current conditions of the UK and the music industry. Musicians of today also find themselves in multi hyphenate positions, stretching themselves to multiple mediums as a means of expression rather than a sole guitar. So, what happens when a group of young creatives find themselves stretched across London, making music that taps into the realms of jazz, trip hop and glitchy electronics, akin to the heyday of British music in the 90s? Enter Parade, a multidisciplinary group consisting of fashion designers, artists and graphic designers. The mysterious and eclectic collective, with two singles prior to the release of their debut mixtape, ‘ Lightning Hit The Trees’, are one of the most exciting bands to emerge this year, solidifying themselves as ones to watch.
'Sweet Thing'' offers a direct switch up, comprised with lush harmonies and sorrowful strings before a moodier tone is established at the halfway point in the song, the vocals abandoned for an instrumental break of shriek muted guitar and marching band drums before we land back on earth. 'Reach' speaks to the trip hop heads in its slowness and dark ambiance, with a haunting vocal performance. 'Pillow Talk' is muted, a moment of deconstructed jazz in this hodge podge collage of a mixtape that is best for its electric ensemble of sounds. And that's the defining factor of the mixtape, the taking on of the 'mixtape' as opposed to 'EP' format has allowed the group to enter and extrapolate from previous defining sounds of genres they're influenced by, to discover something fresh and establish a new voice within it.
'It Moves' closes out the twenty-eight-minute mixtape, straddling between grunge and post-rock with a breathy, urgent vocal performance that switches into a halt in tempo, a slew of wishes articulated by the second vocalist. ' I just want to swing, just let me dive in', she sings pensively. This articulates the general mood and mission statement of the band, in their search for a harsh, dreamy landscape that can only evolve further from this point onwards.