Coming across an old photograph of you and some old friends. Putting on a favourite piece of clothing. Finding the time to moisturise. This is, very approximately, what listening to this collection of songs by the Munich-based band doe bed feels like: a treat - maybe unexpected, but instantly familiar, and soothing.
Familiar and soothing not because their songs recall music that’s already made its way into your heart a long time ago (although doe bed songs do that, too - if your favourite music includes the last Clairo album, Low, Ms John Soda, Belle & Sebastian, or Mazzy Star) but because they radiate empathy. “It’s OK”, they tell you, “I’ve been there too”.
Written, arranged, recorded and produced entirely by the two band members themselves, it would be easy to describe Fury as a lo-fi lockdown living room project. And of course, to an extent, it is. It’s the lo-fi lockdown living room project of two music lovers, who did what a lot of us have been doing during the pandemic: finding meaning, solace and support in songs, in pop culture, in daydreams, in whatever shape peace and quiet has come for each of us in the last two years.
The music they made during this period includes songs like the jangly Out Tonight, which recounts or imagines the awkward but giddy feeling of going to a gig after a long abstinence: “I went out tonight, my friend/Bought a beer and saw a band/It felt unreal”.
Two Hearts Now recalls Broadcast in its psychedelic feel and gorgeous chord changes, while describing an intense emotional bond - a relationship? Parenthood? A new friendship?
The brittle Edges comes at you with bared teeth and guitar effects pedals cranked up all the way to My Bloody Valentine, and includes a line inspired by the TV Show The End of the F***ing World: “Sometimes I get so tired I can’t feel my edges anymore”. Who can relate?
Fury is carried by some lovely acoustic guitar-fingerpicking beamed in from an Elliott Smith-YouTube-tutorial with 236 views, and is the band’s unofficial “burnout song”: “Nothing left of me, but a shaking body”. And Move With Love is a reverb-heavy, ghostly cover of a song recorded by the 70s country singer Kathy Heideman, who faded into obscurity until finding new acclaim via a re-release by the Chicago connoisseur label Numero Group.
If you are lucky, you will be listening to these songs on one of the limited edition cassette tapes doe bed are releasing - but even if you’re not, do still try and seek them out. They will be there.
MATTHIAS SCHERER, JANUARY 2021
credits
released March 18, 2022
Played by Kaline Thyroff & Jan Niklas Jansen
Recorded by Jan Niklas Jansen at Home Alone Studios Großhesselohe & Munich
Extra singing on Arena by Sir Simon Frontzek
Mastered by Amir Shoat
Artwork by Kaline Thyroff
Linernotes by Matthias Scherer
Printed by Herr & Frau Rio
Written by Kaline Thyroff and Jan Niklas Jansen, except "Money in the Bank" by Dawn Landes & "Move with Love" by Dia Joyce, as performed by Kathy Heideman
doe bed is a band from munich, germany. kaline thyroff plays drums, guitar, percussion and kalimba. jan niklas jansen plays
guitar, percussion and bass. both sing.
formed in 2015, doe bed did not play their first show until 2019. their new single comes out on Rheinschallplatten, July 2023....more
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