At least I spelt their name in capitals; it would have been a capital offence not to have done so.
CAPITALS are from Denmark, out of Copenhagen, and one of my peers has identified them as “a cross between Bruce Springsteen and The Killers.”
Their latest single is ‘Fire’ and it concerns rediscovering your belief in love after being burned. In other words putting out the fire, which Billy Joel couldn’t do because he didn’t start it, if you get my drift.
I do get their drift. Most folk reading this will have faced the dilemma of whether or not to trust someone when they’ve shafted you on numerous occasions. And their conclusion, that “sometimes you can be blinded by your bitter experiences that end up blocking your ability to give yourself fully to a new relationship” will ring a bell.
They’ve cleverly reversed the conflict scenario so that in ‘Fire’, it is seen from the point of view of the other person in the new relationship (who is the personification of the fire) and how difficult it might be for that person to convince someone who has already been burned that it won’t happen again. “Once my flame and twice my burn” as Fiona Apple so succinctly put it.
And that role reversal is smartly represented by a noise that sounds like something being played backwards, or Doctor Who’s Tardis being cranked up for another interstellar journey. Perhaps if you listen carefully you’ll hear The Beatles intoning “Paul is dead.”
Thereafter it is a highly atmospheric, hard driving piece, replete with melody and I can see where the comparisons have come from. That atmosphere is enhanced by Kenneth Neflings’s doomy bass vocal, which reminded me of Tom Fleming, late of Wild Beasts.
The only little issue I have is that it is a tad overproduced. Their previous single was called ‘Too much noise’ and you’d think they were trying to reach that noise level here, with multiple synthesisers, possibly live strings and the percussion in competition with each other and Kenneth trying to make himself heard over it all.
It reaches a dramatic crescendo but it could have done that without the overkill.
But I won’t let that spoil it for me. It’s a solid, thoroughly convincing single from a band which has the credentials to make capital out of its work. (Sorry, the idioms won’t stop coming tonight)!
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CAPITALSBAND
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitals_band/
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