Hi-Def speaker or viking warrior? No! It's Langkamer, the indie rock band from Bristol, UK.
- Editor Oh Yeah
- Sep 20, 2023
- 2 min read
band photo by Kieran Jones
It started with Hamlet. Not that Hamlet. Not a bard, but a band.
Though I dig the band’s lyrics more.
That band is Langkamer from Bristol, England and they are phenomenal.
Released in 2022 on the Red Thread Route EP, “Hamlet” is the best song about suicide you’ve never heard.
It would be almost enough for the lyrics to be as clever as they are, but lead singer, Joshua Jarman has a beautiful, easy disaffecting voice that sounds like he’s on the verge of melting away or teetering off the earth, in a good way. With such heavy subject matter in the verses, you better bring it for the chorus and Langkamer do exactly that with a fun and emphatic “Yah Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.” It’s a simple but effective play that immediately made me want to know everything about this band and listen to everything they’ve put out thus far.
The entire Red Thread Route EP is a delicious appetizer. Filled with lackadaisical, easy-going quiet moments, sudden bursts of explosive loud guitar crunch and booming sing-along choruses, or a diplomatic mix of both.
Tasty indeed, but if the 2022 EP was the snack, the 2023 album (released in the not-too distant past of May of this year), The Noon and Midnight Manual is the meal.
Traces of Americana and phases of Indie Folk can be found throughout the band’s latest album, with easy, breezy sing along and shout together choruses, like on the aptly titled album opener “Sing At Dawn.”
The chorus of “All my friends are making money / All my friends are getting rich” is super relatable to just about everyone and just as fun and easy to sing, too.
Many songs on The Noon and Midnight Manual like “Sarah,” “Sailing,” “The Hills,” “We Can’t Take Care of Each Other,” “Hatchet,” “Vanity Fair,” etc., all follow similar paths to joy but some zig when you’re sure they’ll zag and it’s an awesome surprise – usually with a fuzzed out guitar that can melt your face. Annnd that’s when the Pavement references come into focus.
I hear a little bit of My Morning Jacket, Wilco, and Super Furry Animals, too but that may just be the complimentary mix of Roots Rock, Krautrock and Indie Rock soundz. You’ll hear similar things and different things that I didn’t pick up on (and isn’t that what’s truly beautiful about music, anyway?), but either way, I think you’re gonna love The Noon and Midnight Manual, Red Thread Route EP, and Langkamer altogether. Langkamer are: Josh, Tom, Ed, and Dan. (Bristol, UK) They have a pretty cool website and bandcamp with their records and t-shirts that you should buy if you dig them.
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