Slow Is The New Quick, Just As Quiet Was The Old Loud

If Jack and Megan White had grown-up
eating saveloys out of old newspaper, then
they might have sounded something like this.
The girl next door. The boy next door.
Rapunzel on perpendicular percussion.
Metrosexual Rockabilly on skiffle guitar.
Like old school-friends with grass-stained knees,
they coo-coo in perfect harmony as
Winter’s first snowfall flurries outside.
The yule-tide period is a notoriously
turbulent time for affairs of the heart.
I can vouch for that. Relationship meltdown is rife.
The number of break-ups suffers a razor sharp increase.
And so, Slow Club’s repertoire of busted-love strumalongs
and ballads about the impermanence of things, seem to me
to be all the more appropriate at this festive time of the year.
Between my feet, I’m cradling an exotic plant that's
still wrapped in its protective sheet of clear polythene.
It's a Euphorbia pulcherrima. Better known as a poinsettia.
It's flaming red foliage a long way from Southern Mexico
on this cold and icy December’s eve.
The girl who gave it to me, was worried
as to whether or not an exotic plant was an
appropriate gift for me to be taking along to a gig.
But I assured her that the poinsettia would be fine.
That it really wasn’t that kind of gig. And that
besides which, the seasonal bloomer might even end-up
benefitting from the whole City of Steel anti-folk musical experience.
It definitely appears to have grown a little taller since the start of the night.
But maybe that’s just my imagination?

Slow Club sing 'When I Go': Busking Bandstand Session