The Slow Show have unveiled the atmospheric new video for current single ‘Hard To Hide’. Directed by Matt Boone of Manchester’s Scruff The Neck (Glass Caves, Larkins, Cassia), the video echoes the song’s theme of being trapped in a difficult situation.
“We wanted to create a visual that suggested our interpretation of the song: the idea of being stuck in a cycle that you refuse to break out of, even if you know that it’s bad for you,” says Boone. “Our character struggles as she attempts a journey through metamorphosis; unable to flourish in her claustrophobic surroundings, before eventually accepting her fate back in the same place that she started.”
“The video conveys the emotion and the struggle we were trying to create with this song,”adds Rob Goodwin, The Slow Show vocalist. “The asymmetry in love and forgiveness, good and bad is portrayed boldly but with care. Boone really understood the song and we think that’s evident in the video.”
On ‘Hard To Hide’ Goodwin is accompanied by Kesha Ellis and Manchester’s Halle Youth Choir. Ellis’ understated vocals also featured on The Slow Show’s last album, 2016’s ‘Dream Darling’. “There’s a rare quality to Kesha’s voice,” Goodwin enthuses. “She isn’t a professional singer and she’s very shy. It makes for an extremely interesting sound. The lines Kesha sings are really important – she doesn’t sing too much, but when she does she gives a new perspective to the narrative.”
‘Hard To Hide’ is taken from The Slow Show’s third album ‘Lust And Learn’, which will be released via PIAS on August 30. The Manchester quartet will support the release with an extensive European Tour, taking in Islington Assembly Hall on October 10 and culminating in a hometown show at Gorilla on November 7.
With 2015’s ‘White Water’ and the following year’s ‘Dream Darling’ The Slow Show established themselves as a band who inhabit their own universe. There are antecedents – the exploratory beauty of Talk Talk, the ability to frame a story like Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Blue Nile’s determination not to waste a single note. It all coalesces into something other: unless you’ve heard The Slow Show before, you won’t have heard anything quite like The Slow Show.
As the name implies, songs take their time in The Slow Show. This is music built to last. That’s not accidental: singer Rob Goodwin and keyboardist Frederick ’t Kindt spent 18 months honing every note of ‘Lust And Learn’ into shape. Kindt helped establish leading Manchester studio Blueprint and knows the best local strings and brass players, who have helped The Slow Show since the start, while the Halle Youth Choir add the perfect counterpoint to Goodwin’s rich, sonorous voice.
Rarely has a band created such a powerful, fully realised world from what initially appears such a minimal framework. No matter how gentle the beauty of their songs, The Slow Show are a band worth shouting about from the rooftops.