Unsuccessful as my activities as a music blogger may have been over years, they have nonetheless resulted in me receiving upwards of half a dozen emails each day from misguided indie bands and ‘producers’, all seemingly in search of a career, all, with grinding inevitability, trying to persuade me to listen to a REMIX.

(Why is it always a remix? I don’t know, but here’s an honest question: when was the last time that a broadly guitar-based, DIY-level artist you actually LIKE felt the need to produce or lend their name to a ‘remix’? Personally the answer I’m getting is ‘never’, so maybe that could be a good starting point for any attention-seeking musicians out there desperately trying to get their PR blather through the safety-nets of us poor bastards who never gave any hint of giving a fuck about their initial ‘mix’..? Just a thought, etc.)

Anyway. The group known as Southern Comfort have nothing do with any of this. They certainly never sent me an unwanted email. In fact finding any information about them at all proved quite challenging. (Readers, please trust me and never google ‘southern comfort band’). They definitely do not deserve to have a post about their music opened with such a negative, wholly irrelevant diatribe. I basically only got started on it in order to provide some context when I went on to explain that I’ve long ago reached the point at which anything I see described as ‘dream-pop’ gets instantly disregarded, and anything described as ‘shoegaze’ gets PUNCHED TO DEATH (figuratively speaking).

Both of those are descriptors that lazy bloggers and journos (I know, people in glass houses, etc.) are liable to immediately reach for when seeking to categorise Southern Comfort, and I just wanted to lend some weight to my assertion that the dismissals and eye-rolls that naturally accompany such categorisation should perhaps be bypassed just this once, because I actually really like what this band is doing.

What little information I have been able to gather goes as follows: they are Harriet Hudson and Angie Bermuda, and they come from Australia. One of them (I’m not sure which) is the female half of Circle Pit (who got an entry in my 2010 records of the year run-down here). They play guitar and bass and both sing (presumably), and they don’t have any drums (definitely). The track youtubed above is one side of a 7” newly released on a label called Black Petal, and if anyone knows where I can get an affordable copy in the UK, let me know. I guess it’s been sitting on the shelf a while, cos it and two other songs turn up on this myspace page, last updated 2010.

It’s nothing big or special, but it’s the kinda sound I always like, and I like it. I’ve always had a soft spot for bands who go about their business without a drummer. It’s just cool, y’know? An under-explored concept. About the one line-up decision a rock band can make that’s still genuinely daring, and the open space created by the removal of the percussive safety net can have a bold and transformative effect, throwing the sound of the remaining instruments into sharper relief. And such is the case here, as the overdriven bedroom jangle of the guitar takes on a kind of expansive, boundless drift without the need for any pedal-based adornment, propped up and kept in shape by pensive bass notes, as the voices shimmer like a heat haze. Add a drum beat and it would just be an ok-ish indie rock song, but somehow, as the ghost of an invisible click-track taps away, the absence turns into something a bit more special – a real burner.

Comparisons are of course both numerous and obvious: the deceptively gentle psychedelia of Slumber Party (who only *barely* had a drummer when I saw them play back in 2001-ish), a rock-ified Marine Girls, maybe, or the kind of smouldering slow number that could have sat beautifully next to ‘Where Do You Run To?’ on the first Vivian Girls album, definitely.

A real good tune, in other words. Familiar yet different. Lost-cassette-demo level mysterious yet immediate. Not very demanding or anything, but it’ll give you 3:05 of reflective electric calm, help your digestion along, and ask nothing in return. It’s just nice, y’know.

And hey you guys, apparently the b-side of the 7 is a cover of Neil Young’s 'Don’t Cry No Tears', currently hear-able nowhere on the interweb. Sweet jesus do I ever need a copy. I have not harboured such a furious desire to hear something I cannot hear in... many months, at least. Oh well, I'll just watch the video for the A-side again. That'll calm me down.