PHARAOHS

Pharaohs have a tendency to cover the every day and familiar in their far from everyday music. In the case of their latest single, it’s more a case of the every night rather than the every day; “Drift Away” considers the theme of not being able to get to sleep.

It’s all about the body clock being “re-arranged”, about normality flying “off the face of the earth” and wondering “how many hours will I lay here tonight”. It’s something we’ve all experienced and we can all identify with – just as their other songs, varying in subject matter from road gridlock (“Traffic”) to the tedium of essential home maintenance (“Decorex”) cover equally familiar experiences.

Throughout many of Pharaohs’ songs there is the ongoing theme of loneliness and disillusionment. While many other acts will cover such themes in very general themes, all winding roads and looking into sunsets, this band use the blandest of incidents and occurrences to explore something with much more depth.

And so “Drift Away” comes with its own sense of existential crisis where, at night, nothing is ever as it once seemed – a common feeling felt by insomniacs (even part-time or temporary insomniacs) everywhere.

The music meanwhile is something else entirely. A lullaby this is not. As with their other songs – and, indeed – as with much other music coming out of Kent at the moment (Delta Sleep, History of the Trade, Fish Tank et al), Pharoahs’ music is complicated and experimental.

Of all such acts currently plying their trade, Pharaohs are the most accessible – and not just because of their easy to identify with lyrics: their songs also offer something of an olive branch to listeners with slightly more mainstream indie tastes (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron).

Here, for example, the introduction wouldn’t sound too far out of place on a Vampire Weekend track – all sub-Saharan beats and rhythms.

The accompanying video matches the song brilliantly – a rapid fire set of images of band members trying to get to sleep, interspersed with the band performing the song in their pyjamas. Finally, in the closing moments, you see a sheep gate-crashing the not-quite slumber party.

Much as you’re supposed to count sheep to get to sleep, I’m not sure I’d be able to get to nod off if a genuine one was in my bedroom either. Fantastic stuff!

 

28/04/2011 • Single Review 'Drift Away'

By Stephen Morris • Photos by Unknown

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