South – You Are Here

Bluhammock Music

South is a UK-based pop band that aims to stay dedicated to a vision of constant creative collaboration between band members Joel Cadbury, Jamie McDonald, and Brett Shaw. This tie was cemented at London’s Haverstock music school where the boys worked together under the tutelage of musician and teacher David Cross. You Are Here is their fourth album and has received mixed reviews from long-time fans, but I think it stands on its own two feet as an exuberant album with a pleasant range of sounds. 

Though there are diamonds and duds in You Are Here, overall the album makes a great soundtrack for anything from a spontaneous road trip with your buds to a quiet night at home with your honey. However, you’ll probably want to go ahead and skip the introductory track, “Wasted.” It begins innocently enough with broad instrumental tones and a dreamy lyric entrance until it falls into the chorus of “feeling tired, so tired, tired of getting wasted.” These whiny, unimaginative lyrics are repeated over and over again until the song ends.

Luckily, the album immediately picks-up with the subsequent tracks. The second song, “Opened Up,” is a particularly lovely recording that starts simply with some basic guitar riffs before transforming itself with light vocals that roll across the top of the instrumentals in a wistful landscape. Many of the songs on the album are touchingly compassionate such as “The Creeping” where the lyrics declare: “I've been waiting for, waiting for your madness/Could spend with you all night/I been sitting here waiting for your sadness/I’m hoping things are alright/Tell me, tell me, tell me everything is gonna be alright.” In songs like this, the boys of South truly display their sentimental side.

Though some would consider them emo, I think their spirited lyrics and brooding instrumentals are presented as loving and caring instead of whiny or sulky. Overall, South’s folk-pop charm and absorbing creativity will continue to keep me listening to You Are Here. 

Review by Djuna A. Davidson