Track Review: Worn Out Buildings by 86TVs

 A track that sounds like it's been with you your entire life!

Holy hell this track is magical! Feels like a song I've always known, but has just been on the tip of my lounge my entire life. It's like it was always hanging out there in the ether. In the blob of music that exists somewhere up in the clouds that every so often, someone stumbles into it, and plucks out a melody that pops a lump in our collective throats.

After a month of dealing with some really devastating personal news, this track has been the ultimate comfort blanket. 

You don’t have to be yourself, right now.

Just give it time, you’ll work that out.

I love this track. I've had it jammed on repeat for about 30 minutes every day. But before I delve deeper into the track, let's chat about cricket!

(stick with me here, we're off on a ramble...😝)

My partner got me into Cricket pretty early on in our relationship. I knew she was a fan before we dated, but little did I know just how BIG a fan she was. Part of my "indoctrination" into the sport, was an amazing World Cup win by England in 2019, and the introduction of a really wild "loosely cricket based" podcast called Tailenders.

The only host I recognised at the time was Greg James of Radio 1 fame. The others being Jimmy Anderson, a grumpy northerner who they kept saying was the best Bowler of all time, Felix White, an absolute raconteur who could pluck out amazing recollections of games gone by whilst every so often playing guitar, and a roll-up shoe salesman called Matt who is a very distant relative of Sachin Tendulkar, the greatest Batter of all time. At the time, this all sounded like madness. 4 years later, don't think I can go a week without listening to these beautiful people talk about their lives, and maybe sometimes a spot of cricket on the side.

(ok... still a lot of cricket here ...)

So after falling in love with these guys, after a few podcasts they mentioned that Felix had been a member of The Maccabees. "Oh. That's why he has a guitar!" I proclaimed to no-one in the park. I'd managed to miss a lot of their back catalogue over the years and it was a great time finding some absolute gems in there. "Latchemere", oh yes please!

So realising I'd missed the boat on The Maccabees, hearing Felix talk humbly about his new project with his brothers, "86TVs", I couldn't really not get incredibly excited. It felt like it was the first time I'd got to understand who a person was before I listened to their music, and what an absolute treat that is. It's like finding out a great friend of yours has been in a band all their life, and you never knew, but on reveal it's kind of the band you've been waiting years to listen too!

People change through different phases. They rise through the waters through worn out buildings. 

So back to the track. An absolute storming indie-pop gem with melodic hints of Belle and Sebastian  and Sufjan Stevens with the thumping beats of Secret Machines. The vocals are absolutely beautiful. Every time I hit play i feel like I hear something new in there, like a present I'm still opening. Feels like a track that will inevitably be an amazing set closer, maybe even as a low-key acoustic version with a full on choir at the end ha. One track down and I'm so excited to see what 86TVs drop next. If it's anything like Worn Out Buildings, we're about to see the start of incredibly awesome journey!