“Howsya weekend? Bet ya got messed up!” Drawls Ben, kinda seedy, kinda sleezy, with more than a hint of regret over a looping bassline. ‘Abyss’ kicks off like many an overheard, one-sided telephone conversation on the Monday morning commute, while some worse-for-wear weekend warrior relates their debauched manoeuvres in a vain attempt to impress some unseen lovely on the other end of the phone. Overly loud and overly proud for the benefit of everyone else with the misfortune to be making the same journey. What transpires here though reveals a young lad expressing his existential woes in a James Joyce-ian stream of consciousness with an evident love of word play which has more akin with a young Alex Turner’s earlier writing.

I was lucky enough to catch Gone Tomorrow at the Gathering Sounds festival where the band kicked off the day’s entertainment at the KU, the iconic live music venue in Stockton-on-Tees. It was a genuinely heart-warming affair as the youngsters took to the stage and proceeded to let us punters know how blown away they were to see us all; it was as if the band had bought tickets to see the crowd! This good-natured mutual love continued and developed throughout the show and endeared the band to the hundred (Ben’s estimate, but more on that later) or so who had got down to KU nice and early and were duly treated to a great show from the lads from just down the road. The bonhomie and exuberance is palpable and is an absolute joy to be part of, we left the KU feeling like we had a bunch of new mates.

Ben, frontman and songwriter, joined Seth and I on our radio show last week for a chat about the new single and the band. Ben spoke about his hopes for the band to always be just as much fun as it has been so far, a group of good mates getting together and doing what they do best: write clever lyrics, creating great tunes and play them really loud. Ben acknowledges the aforementioned Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys as a big influence, along with bands like Catfish and the Bottlemen, Kasabian, Muse but what you hear with Gone Tomorrow is a unique voice and a different sound. Ben writes about what he sees and feels in everyday life, he weaves this into an imaginative and very interesting tapestry, I love this style of song writing, it is what has always separated the mediocre from the special. I am huge fan of the sublime amidst the mundane, the Ritz and the Rubble, it reminds us that there is magic in the everyday, you just have to look for it.

And we found a bit of that magic down at the KU in Stockton at Gathering sounds. The boys turned up in suits and ties (to be honest, I thought it was school uniform, sorry guys), played their slot with energy, love and grins as big their guitar riffs. The band fully embraced opening the day and stayed to enjoy the festival and support the other bands playing, at one point I felt like I was stalking the youngsters as we constantly met up in the different venues around town, talk about the awkward fourth meet. But I’m digressing here, Abyss is a great single, built around that looping bassline with an ebb and flow of big drums and raucous guitars. The repeated motif of the bassline underscoring the protagonists story, the repeated use of booze, downing cans, to escape the everyday, never finding what he is looking for, never knowing what he is trying to get away from, just utilising the same strategy, getting the same results, repeat to fade.

I can’t wait to see Gone Tomorrow play live again and I will be eagerly awaiting all subsequent releases with bated breath. They have a couple of gig announcements which will be on the bands social media including the brilliant Stockton Calling on the 8th of April.

Abyss is available to stream right now.

You can listen to our chat with Ben by clicking the link below.

Dan Rowley
#MusicSceneWales
@MusicSceneWales
musicscenewalescymru@gmail.com