The Grubby Mitts – Valediction

Grubby Mitts are a wilfully eclectic nine-piece art-rock ensemble from Bedford, fronted by visual artist Andy Holden. The band return with an expanded line up, including a full brass section, for the release of the new EP and ahead of a full album, ‘Love In The Misanthropocene’, later in the year, in which their sound moves from orchestral pop to classical minimalism to post-punk. “There is hope”, say the band, quoting Franz Kafka., “but not for us.”

The band are known for their manifesto, ‘Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity’, however with the new EP, recorded in the wake of the death of Andy Holden’s partner, the electronic musician and composer Mira Calix, the new EP fully commits to maximum sincerity.

The EP opens with a reworking of Mountain and I (for Mira). A soundscape made from processed field recordings evokes a lonely dawn at the foot of a mountain. The song then gently climbs to the mountain’s peak as the band’s brass section builds, recalling Richard Strauss’ epic Mountain Symphony, before the sorrowful chanted refrain arrives, speaking directly to our own mortality.

The central work of the EP is Just (After Song of Songs), a version of the composition by David Lang known for its use in the film Youth. The original recording by Trio Mediaeval was Mira’s most treasured piece of music, and so the band, with the support of Mira’s friends and collaborators, have now recorded their interpretation. With production by Fred Lomas, who has produced music for Kanye West and Mark Leckey, the track is a haunting rendition. It includes Mira’s voice and swirling sounds from a swarm of bees recorded by band leader Andy Holden, in what he described as, “an almost religious moment, when a full hive of bees swarmed around me”: for twenty years Calix used an image of a bee as her logo. The song speaks to lost love and how, during the process of mourning, memory will often prevent us from recalling the person as a whole: instead, they are only remembered as if reflected in fragments of shattered glass. In the wake of an unexpected death it can feel as if time has stopped, and the hypnotic repetition of Just (After Song of Songs) reflects this experience.

The final track, You Were a Swift, recorded live at Mira’s memorial, is an explosion of emotion. The song evokes the spirit of Mira through the image of a bird that during its life-time will fly a distance equivalent to the moon and back without ever landing. The lyrics feel close to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, with dramatic imagery describing the ineffable bird in flight as a metaphor for surging emotions. The song has a Velvet Underground feel, moving through simple verses until arriving at a huge chaotic sound and triumphant brass refrain, with the vocals breaking down and becoming the screech of the swift itself as it enters the heavens.

Format – 12″ EP