Never Enough Notes e-zine // reviews + interviews + music

Not sure where to start when talking about a single as epic as ‘The First of Many Dreams About Monsters’. Being hailed as ‘a mega single’ by BBC6 music, the courageous and very creative new track from art rockers Spring Offensive, simply is one of the finest pieces of music craftsmanship this writer has experienced in a very long time.

I don’t think the track needs to be necessarily explained, because the song by itself stands up with out a back story, but read on and you will begin to realise why this band are something special indeed.

The impetus for the record came from ‘On Death and Dying’, a book by Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in which she lays out five individual states of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (‘the Grief Cycle’). The band used this structure as their basis for the record and incorporated audio extracts from interviews with Kübler-Ross to link the sections together.

“We don’t want to force-feed any meanings on to the listener. However, it is worth pointing out that this is not a record about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It is not a record that imagines losing a child. We sing about the act of writing about grief. The potential insensitivity of it, and the importance of trying to make some sense of it.”

Such a concept single does need a little explaining but like I said you just have to listen to ‘The First of Many Dreams About Monsters’ to realise that Spring Offensive are not about throw away singles. This is most importantly a very creative and an emotionally driven piece of art that will make you re-think and assess what can be achieved musically.

‘Angels are watching you, the walls are not listening, I trade everything I have, everything is not enough’ , it’s simple but soul crushing lines, like this one, that make me fall in love with this band every time I hear anything they do. It’s beautifully constructed and has an almost divine melodic sentiment throughout. Intelligent and openly honest, never has one song made me so frustrated by how brilliant it is, I kinda just want to hate them, I don’t of course!

Look the single is free The First of Many Dreams About Monsters you can download it now. If you only discover one unsigned band in the near future, I can’t express enough to you out there, it has to be the Spring Offensive. If you don’t believe me just listen to a small part of it now, but do remember it is FREE!!

The First of Many Dreams About Monsters by springoffensive

For more info on the band themselves you can head on over to http://myspace.com/springoffensive also check out their live dates too. Expect to see me at their next two London dates that’s for sure.