Trophy Wife - The Quiet Earth / White Horses

This coming week Brighton’s dark soundscape magicians Esben & The Witch release their debut album Violet Cries which should you be quick and order from Rough Trade you will also receive a bonus 4 track CD. The three-piece are also about to go out on tour to promote the album. Expect skulls, lanterns and to be uncomfortably spooked if you’re in attendance at one of their shows. We’ll be catching their biggest headlining gig to date in their home city later this week.

Supporting them on the first leg of the tour are a band who we featured on the blog back last August – Trophy Wife. Since then the Oxford group have supported Foals and released their debut single Microlite through Moshi Moshi. They’re about to follow it up with another Moshi Moshi release – The Quiet Earth and it’s backed with the song White Horses.

The Quiet Earth continues the same laidback indie grooves that their debut demonstrated – in fact from what we’ve seen of the band live, pretty much all of their material follows this pattern. Subtle guitar riffs, quietly charming male vocals and just enough beats to get the feet moving a little.

They’re odd bedfellows Esben &The Witch and Trophy Wife, but when you put them under the sheets Esben & The Witch strip the beat naked and just leave sinister-strings and screwed up vocals that build towards a druggy messed-up climax that never actually happens. You can hear it all in the remix of White Horses below, together with the originals of both sides of the single which is released on 7” and digital download on February 28.

Trophy Wife - The Quiet Earth by trophywifeband

Trophy Wife - White Horses by trophywifeband

Trophy Wife - White Horses (Esben and the Witch Remix) by trophywifeband

Trophy Wife - New Waves @ Breaking More Waves

Oxford is doing pretty well this year in terms of putting out great music. Stornoway and Foals, both Oxford bands, have released albums that could well feature in a number of end of year lists including our own. Now here’s another group from the city of dreaming spires who are making us grin with tranced-up abandon.

Trophy Wife are a band that we first came across via the excellent Illegal Tender and Not Many Experts. Trophy Wife claim to produce ‘ambitionless office disco’ but actually produce self-contained ice-cube-cool rhythmic indie, the kind of indie that abstains from overtly rocking out and instead sets an objective of bringing the dance through the use of temperate chiming guitars, funky bass lines and soft disciplined vocals. The song Microlite, like its title, may at first seem featherweight and unheavy - you could expect it to fly away into the ether to be forgotten. However its subtle patterns and vocal chants get under the skin, or at least under the feet, forcing them to move, albeit in a gentle and modest way. Their cover of Joanna Newsom’s The Book of Right-On features ghostly whistling, a repetitive disco groove and soft apologetically unemotional vocals similar to what Delphic do on songs such as Remain and This Momentary, but Trophy Wife still make the song very much their own. Then there’s the percussive jam of Take This Night which is available to download below, which provides the bands biggest reference point.....

That reference point is Foals. In terms of grooves and breakdowns, there’s certainly a symbiotic relationship. It therefore seems highly appropriate that the band should be supporting Yannis and co on some of their Autumn UK tour dates in November in Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Southampton and Brighton as well as a special MTV under 18’s show at Dingwalls in Camden, London later this month. At that point we’ll get the chance to see what they look like, their current photos (above) revealing nothing of the band. All we do know is that they are a trio who have suggested that one of their ambitions for this year is to play a show and spend their Sainsbury’s nectar points. They’re certainly going to achieve the first and if they use this no.2 shouldn’t be hard either.

It’s early days for Trophy Wife as a band but their gainful compositions seem designed for more than just the water-cooler moment at the ambitionless office they speak of. Prizes could be for the taking.

Trophy Wife - Take This Night by Breaking More Waves