Biography

There are few bands who are aware of how potent a weapon silence can be in their music. In a rush to fill all the space on a multi-track studio, the ability to draw a listener closer in by cutting songs back to their bare essentials has been somewhat lost in recent years. As their name implies, The Slow Show have both a magisterial beauty to their sparse songs and the confidence to let their spellbinding four-minute stories find their mark. Rarely since The Blue Nile has a band created such a powerful, fully realised world from what initially appears such a minimal framework.

The Slow Show’s new self-produced second album Dream Darling has a hard-won optimism in its ten graceful songs. It’s music made by five men who, as singer Rob Goodwin explains, have “gone through the typical life-changing experiences that men in their late thirties and forties experience”.  Whether that’s the romantic regret of the Tindersticks-inflected drama of ‘Breaks Today’ or overcoming loss in the album’s towering centrepiece ‘Ordinary Lives’, this is music to live in. Dream Darling is a collection of songs that any adult who’s lived a little can identify with, even when the loss, new life and break-ups detailed within feel monumental to the people experiencing them.

Having gone on tour in Germany and Switzerland almost immediately after the band formed in 2010, The Slow Show are a major cult concern and festival regulars in mainland Europe, where they’re signed Haldern Pop Records, the label formed by the team behind the successful festival.“We learned to be a band in Europe,” recalls Goodwin. “The crowds there immediately listened to us so intently. They were very quiet, which might not have happened if we’d dropped into a club at home in Manchester on a Thursday night to play. When you’re playing such intricate, slow songs, you need the audience’s attention.”After taking four years to assemble, 2015’s debut album White Water was a more aggressive, angry affair, topped off by Goodwin’s mordant baritone vocals.

It’s a startling rumble that bears comparison to Leonard Cohen and Mark Lanegan but, on Dream Darling, Goodwin has honed his vocal range to become a compelling storyteller. He’s a singer who’s now able to narrate the jilted-at-the-altar heartbreak of ‘Last Man Standing’ or ‘Hurts’ tale of a man offering redemption to a sex worker with the necessary levels of wit and pathos, as well as convincingly crooning into the mic. “I never thought I was a singer,” Goodwin admits. “When the band started, we looked to get a singer in for six months, but couldn’t find anyone, because the people we met didn’t serve the song very well. I’m more of a storyteller than a singer. If you’re the person who’s written the song, you can get its point across better than anyone else, even if their voice is slightly better. I’ve learned to use my voice much better on this record.”

While they’re proud of Manchester’s heritage, musically The Slow Show stand apart, influenced more by Sigur Ros than New Order or The Stone Roses. “But seeing how many great bands come from Manchester makes you realise you can make it, and that’s important,” says Goodwin. Dream Darling is a record that shows anything is possible too. Any change and upheaval can be overcome. No matter how gentle the beauty of their songs, The Slow Show are a band worth shouting about from the rooftops.