Tiny Hands
“Wherever U R”

We thought it would be a cold day in hell the day that we would see a queue outside a pub in Hanwell in any event, let alone a show. And let alone a (admittedly, from our own somewhat-skewered and largely-outdated-at-the-time perspective) a multi-pub crawl-style festival that seemingly is the biggest thing to a town that we called home for the best part of 20-25 years (we can’t put a precise figure on that, because like a lot of people our age living in London we’ve had to move around fucking loads because the fucking landlords can arbitrarily put the fucking rent up or give notice to fucking quit whenever they fucking want because our fucking government are fucking idiots). Indeed, it was actually a cold day, but we’ve not really been to hell (only the music industry, sadly) so we have little basis for comparison in terms of the respective climates. But, golly gosh Hanwell, did you ever impress us with the 4th Hanwell Hootie this weekend. It’s actually a thing. The locals couldn’t really believe it, nor could the bemused visitors, some of whom were from actual-abroad places. Indeed, most of our weekend revolved around stomping around our grounds of yore, and catching up with several individuals one-on-one intermittently which only enhanced our ever-growing sense of well-being that we’ve been enjoying as of late. Pensive happiness requires suitable soundtracking, and we’re very pleased indeed that experimental pop outfit Tiny Hands have come into our lives primarily for that purpose, but also in general as well. Seemingly only birthed into this world in the tangible context – that is to say, conveniently discounting the amount of time, skill and outright effort that is required to put a quality band together in the first place, but so rarely mentioned because sadly most of the world doesn’t seem to give many shits about that bit – in the last couple of days, current Track Of The Day Wherever U R could be perceived to stand toe-to-toe with the modern pop stalwarts, inclusive of rising, “introducing” and established categories, of today who may be said to be peddling similar wares. Stuff like Jack Garratt, LOYAL, A.Chal (jeah), that kind of thing. A strong bedroom production element that is inclusive of a meandering softly-incisive vocal designed to make you shit your pants in the nicest possible way. We are also reminded of other (and coincidentally former TOTD’ers themselves) prolific types in the same field like Rhye (anyone know what happened to them?) and ESSE (same question), and there are at least two or three moments of George Michael brilliance in the fabric of the track. Wherever U R features on an entire EP – brilliantly-titled at this time as simply EP – and its the sort of record that makes us feel a bit gutted that we don’t have more time to actually listen to the body of work, as opposed to this mode of “digestion” that the world seems to have become accustomed to in the past few years.

Tiny Hands – Wherever U R

Actually, fuck it. We got time if you got time.