No Pain In Pop

Night Union

Photo: Tobias

…then the broken light came tapering through the gaps in the glass, sun shattering on a pane it’d beaten vivid, first, then faded into an amaranth, cerulean, fern prose that told loud and wry the time and the weight of how things are now. Just another day under the rainbow dome for London’s Gentle Friendly, who awake to find alarms chiming new hours in and old ones away towards the weather and unchecked foliage that creeps outside. There’s a stretch and a pause as bones click and break the silence again, triumph falls flat in the distance, through the din of trees all palm and shawly, in the shape of a paper plane plummet, awesome awesome silent sight and a martyrdom more necessary than anyone can tell yet even if they were watching what you were. Twenty seconds or so of falling and then it disappears behind the canopy before anyone in this dome comes within eyeshot – other eyes watched its descent, perhaps, some distance flung afield, but for now the moment’s passed: dead rocket, solemn somewhere. Still, now a half-thought of weary and noble noise ties together to tear the skyline, cloud-hopping curios with fighter pilot helmets and three grubby stripes that chart the gap between shoulder and elbow like a grazed knee, Messrs Daniel and David stretch out, again, there are drums to bang and ridmic knots to be laced; skyward leftenants, hear dem angels yez?????

MP3: Gentle Friendly - Five Girl Night

On a planet ruled by a falling sun everyone is Icarus; dead rockets waxy wings.

Across the dorm the prolapsed star is rousing Arch M from however many minutes of sleep was had in between the hot hours. Lobes are still plugged to the loop of grandfather’s music box, the data now battered and worn common as old tape and like they said it wouldn’t by the rise in temp. Through soft hiss melody persists, valiant still as Italian bill-boards rotted and scattered across the plains of the small-hours, bawling and baleful, pen-pal appalling. Corey came from the West coast US four years back to this sinking city, before Bradford Cox’s soul seemed so street-corner.

MP3: Arch M - 21st Union

Brains boiling in skull, ’21st Union’ leaks out through the ears as a dazed, humid sob, the residue of fever dreams. Sentient in sleep, a beat pulses carefully through the treacherous coves of the subconscious (dread on the right brain, sex on the left) - an intruder! - to wake the puppet with a start. Wiping bleary eyes thoughts turn to the last night and the next night and the swelling tender surf of all the other nights still to come, before they notice the back-turned shadow staring out past the glass, fists aclenched and the brain, stretching its aching bones up and out, makes ready for the day that’s ahead and appearing to expand in all directions around it, desperate gills fluttering like young, burning leaves.