"in a grain of rice, melting block of ice I go off, off to face the day..."
I am stoked to impart some words about "Flash of Light" by London's very interesting Tugboat Captain a self described baroque-pop four piece centered around singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Alexander Sokolow. "Flash of Light" is a short piece and feels even shorter than it is because it's broken tenderness leaves you wanting much more. Swirling in psychedelic sounds that give away to something that might sound more like 70's American pop (when pop referred to rock with jazz flourishes) I could not help but think of a collision of The Flaming Lips and Todd Rundgren. If you are so young as to not know who Rundgren is, I would encourage you to find his music.
As I listen to this beautiful work that feels incredibly thoughtful with existential treads running throughout it, ones that maybe Sokolow wants to tie up, the loose ends anyway, it occurs to me that this short meditation on life feels, in some way, like something that might be a daily affirmation. It also occurs to me that maybe the brevity here is directly related to the brevity of life itself. Tugboat Captain released their debut studio album "Rut" in 2020 and as press notes reveal have been socked away in the studio for the last 2 years: "spent the past two years quietly burrowed away in studios across South London you can hear a new level of studio experimentation recalling the wilfully weird of early Flaming Lips, the sonic exploration of Grizzly Bear and the intimate clatter of Yeah Yeah Yeahs."
Love this song. Truly. In it's questions and even sadness it somehow feels joyful too.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3gBLnOLSOAV0tXQa6ZGGKb
https://tugboatcaptain.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tugboat_captain/
Born in 2017 as the solo project of London based multi-instrumentalist Alexander Sokolow, Tugboat Captain have morphed over three albums and a handful of EP's into an ambitious baroque-pop four piece. Growing from 2017's moody lo-fi debut 'The Tugboat Captain' through jangly, folk-inflected sophomore record 'Everybody Seem's To Think That I'm A Raincloud', into the murky waters of a 2020 lockdown the band released their debut studio album, 'Rut'. On Rut the band emerged from the sonic limitations of homespun bedroom-pop accompanied by a ramshackle orchestra of friends with a grand, symphonic pop record which lost none of the intimacy of the previous work that garnered significant critical acclaim across the UK DIY community.
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