The change of gear will surprise anyone who knows their previous single, “Five Years or So,” a melancholy and inward-looking piece that took its time. That was a band standing at a window watching the rain. This one has kicked the door off its hinges. The tempo is up, the volume is up, and the mood has turned from wistful to confrontational. Plenty of bands announce a new direction and then take a cautious half-step towards it. Weekday Social have vaulted the fence, and the leap is more exciting than any polite shuffle would have been.<\/p>
The song’s subject is the slow, guilty drift towards someone you were sensible enough to distrust at the start. Louise wrote it several years ago, and it has the assurance of material that has been road-tested. It has spent its recent life as the closing number of their live set, the position reserved for the song that sends people home with ringing ears and a grin. The wariness of the opening moments gives way to surrender, and the tension between knowing better and doing it anyway is the engine of every great pop-punk chorus, from Jimmy Eat World’s earnest ache to Blink-182’s teenage bravado and Fall Out Boy’s theatrical self-laceration. Weekday Social name all three as influences, and they earn the company by borrowing the spirit and leaving the costumes behind.<\/p>
The band’s greatest strength is the way three people pull in one direction. Gavin and Ben have not merely been hired to decorate a finished song. They have brought an old one back to life, and the collaborative energy shows in a record that feels played rather than assembled, even though it was assembled in the most modern way imaginable. Each part was recorded separately at home, and Louise engineered, produced and mixed the whole thing on her MacBook. Ten years ago that sentence would have been an apology. Now it is a statement of craft, and the finished single sounds polished without being sanded smooth, with the edges left sharp where they ought to be. A bedroom production that sounds like a band in a room together is harder to achieve than any expensive studio gloss, and it deserves proper credit.<\/span><\/p> It also matters that this is the sound of a band with range. Moving from introspective melancholy to aggression inside two singles takes nerve, and it suggests a group with more than one trick and the confidence to play them all. The London indie scene has no shortage of guitar bands, but far fewer of them can make an audience feel a lump in the throat one moment and a fist in the air the next.<\/span><\/p> There is a modest quibble, which is that a song this eager for a crowd deserves to be heard in a room full of people, and for the moment Weekday Social have no dates in the diary after their appearance at High Tide Festival in Twickenham. That is a situation to fix quickly. Promoters ought to take note, because this is a set-closer waiting for a larger stage.<\/span><\/p> “So Close” is fast, loud, self-made and thoroughly likeable. It takes a bad idea and turns it into a good song, which is the oldest trick in the genre and still one of the best. Weekday Social have pulled it off with conviction, and their next move will be worth watching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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