So in the end, the inevitable sensation of disappointment prevails – the result of over-hyping a deceptively middle-of-the-road, expensive and charmless event. And that was just Glastonbury.

Ah yes – it’s football again – but this will be the last World Cup related post for a while, I promise. But something occurred to me in between Germany‘s excellent third and brilliant fourth goal. I’d missed a massive opportunity on ANBAD. The World Cup was the perfect excuse to draw tenuous parallels – ANBAD’s favoured type of parallel, natch – between bands and the teams  taking part.

For example: if the England team were a band, they’d be the latter-day Oasis: over-confident, yet wildly under-performing; supported by loutish, drunken mob; living off past glories, yet clearly without the ability to add to them; in possession of a hugely inflated sense of self-worth.

So, before I start to regret this whole charade: Speak Galactic are almost definitely Sweden’s national team – understated, skilful, calm, and packing dynamite punches.

How useful then, that Speak Galactic are based in Gotenburg, lending my dreadful soccer-analogy a modicum of credence.

Songs like Wool Socks are the ones I always look forward to receiving. Why? Let’s use Wool Socks as the readily-available example. I don’t know exactly what causes this, but as soon as the song started, I knew what I was going to get.

Don’t interpret that the wrong way: it’s not that the song is predictable – it’s not – but as it began I got the sensation very quickly that I was going to enjoy the next four-ish minutes.

And how: the song is delicate and sinewy; light, like the cool gold of evening sun; and wistful, expansive, complex. Delicious, fulfilling, shimmering. You know, just like England aren’t.

http://speakgalactic.com/44-2/