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Horsebread - cant (Sam McLeod)

9 September 2024

You can’t (pun intended) accuse Horsebread of being lazy, considering that this latest single is their seventh release of the year. Ahead of a new album, “cant” has already earned the reputation as the best of the current crop, which, given the standards that this duo has already set for themselves, is high praise indeed.

“cant” brilliantly underlines Sam McLeod and Andrew Frazier’s lush, signature sound, and while you might hear vibes reminiscent of everyone from Radiohead and Sufjan Stevens and from Warpaint to Bon Iver, at its heart, theirs is a unique sonic experience.

Chilled to perfection, full of chiming and charming banks of acoustic guitar, and topped with McLeod’s surprising and seductive sonic tones, the whole thing is awash with an almost ethereal and angelic quality.

The song (the title word refering to language and dialogue rather than the negative meaning of the word when apostrophied) is a discussion about the dangers of creative people trying to measure their successes by other people’s rules. It is a song from which the creative person hits so many imposed brick walls that they feel like giving up but can’t. So, the song is both a cant in the literary sense and a can in the ambitious sense.

“cant” is a gorgeous balance of sonics and space, of understatement and passionate energies; if this song doesn’t make you note down the band’s name for further exploration, then perhaps music isn’t for you after all.

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