It took too long to happen but Gichard finally got the job done - finally someone had the bright idea to ask the question of what 'Dry Cleaning but minimal wave coded' might feel like. And guess what? The results are good. Chins For Lefty is the Glasgow-based duo's debut, though it's assured enough to sound as if it's something that's been in the works for a while, perhaps a benefit of the off-the-clock nature of the home recording that brought it to life. Vaguely new wave informed Sprechgesang that doesn't originate from 'The Windmill Scene' can only be a good thing of course, and even discussing such a prospect is borderline tedious at this point, but it does feel important to understand where Gichard are from, the rich, artful legacy of their hometown key to how they're understood - this is a very Glasgow School band, even if they share DNA with the very southern, aforementioned Dry Cleaning, and the European elan of Monokultur or Library L'Amour. As such, comparisons to Arab Strap are perhaps inevitable - particularly their career-high live album, Mad For Sadness - the combination of Scottish-accented, spoken word monologues, linear drum machine klang and inspired guitar dynamics an obvious shared approach, though singer Lisa Jones is very much her own voice, her lyrics both absurdist and confessional in ways that paint vivid scenarios in vignette form. In this manner, Gichard also remind me of another Scottish duo from that same era, TV Viberto, a possibly phantom aberration I saw support Mogwai at the Birmingham Sanctuary in the late 90s that no-one else but me seems to have any memory of. 25 minutes of one man sat on the floor reciting hard to follow anecdotes into a microphone while another played around with a guitar sat on a stool just behind. That's all I can tell you, but the memory of the experience endured. Was it a dream? There's little evidence anywhere else that it wasn't, but do dreams usually last this long? The internet seems to be of no help either. If I did imagine it all, then that's fine - I now have a real living and breathing Gichard here to scratch that fantasy itch. So there it is: Gichard, a band I invented as a teenager, but better of course, my very own Memorial Device I suppose. If you don't consider that a glowing endorsement, I think you may have misunderstood.
FFO: Dry Cleaning, Arab Strap, Monokultur, Yuta Matusmura, Library L'Amour
