A few months ago, we went to see Balloon Machine’s first ever interviewee Faith Eliott. Green Gardens, the evening’s support act, were entirely new to us, bewitching us with their impeccable harmonies and charmingly restrained rhythms. Their set left us excited to hear more from the Leeds quartet, something that was assuaged with the release of double A-side ‘They Held Me Down / And I Felt Like The Sea’.
‘They Held Me Down’ is assembled perfectly, the peaks and troughs arriving exactly when required. Presaged by the words, “sour grapes / this wine has lost its taste”, the chorus is a luxuriant waltz. It’s so head-boppingly sumptuous that you exist entirely within its ecosystem for those few glorious seconds. The subject matter is ambiguous, the listener left unsure as to whether the lead singer, whose voice resembles Mystery Jets’ Blaine Harrison, is now free of the weight holding him down or still lumbered by it. The singer’s fate may be unknown, but with the resplendent ‘They Held Me Down’, Green Gardens have created a space capable of providing anyone with respite, however momentarily.