London-via-Ramsgate band Pynch pierced our hearts last year with the singles “Somebody Else” and “The World’s Gone Crazy (For Love)”, and we’re delighted that they return today with another heartbreaking banger. According to singer Spencer Enock, “Karaoke” is about “love, communication and a trip to California.” He adds:
“I guess it’s about how two people navigate a relationship and how it can sometimes feel like you’re not speaking the same language even though you’re completely in love... I recorded a lot of it at home and then we did an awesome session with Gordon Raphael over Easter where we recorded a few things like drums and acoustic guitar which we combined with my original recordings. I wanted it to sound really intimate but massive at the same time and I think the recording process reflects that in quite a cool way.“
With their usual precision pulse in place alongside a quietly determined bass, we get the intimacy – but as soon as the loping guitar comes in, we feel that sense of ‘massive’-ness that Enock wanted. It’s easy to imagine two people in a car, not really communicating, while the big blue Californian sky stares back at them from outside. The unceasing Southern California sun has a tendency to feel like it’s mocking us Brits if we happen to experience it while in a dour mood, which is exactly where we find Enock here – “singing karaoke while the sky is falling.” His voice and lyricism maintains his everyman persona, and it’s no surprise to hear him sing “California has fucked with my head… we’re now living in a perfume advert / We’re not even living in the real world / Never felt so far from home.”
These sardonic observations are just by-products of the main thrust of the song, which is about his and his partner’s inability to find a space in which they can reconnect, “I don’t understand this / It’s like you’re speaking in tongues.” Ultimately, he seems to accept that this might be an irredeemable situation, but the love is still present as he poignantly affirms “stay strong and don’t you waste it / we only get to go round once.”
The video for “Karaoke” is, well, a homemade karaoke video. Enock says “is sort of a like cross between the end scene of Napolean Dynamite, Microsoft Word and the Krusty Comeback Special.” Watch it below or listen to the song on streaming platforms.
