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With the start of the new year, I was ready to pick an upbeat funky house track as a my song of the week, however I’ve chosen the complete opposite because Archy Marshall aka King Krule has produced an honest track about hardships and pressing issues which I feel many twenty somethings could relate to.
Thames Water is a track that highlights problems you get living in London, with the mention of drug dealers struggling to make ends meet and also the constant reference to a woman overdosing in a bathroom cubicle. ‘This inner city life treats me like shit’ is definitely the most relatable lyric in this song. With the increasing house prices and the on going gentrification of so much of London, the city is changing a lot and Marshall is letting it be known in his music. He recently stated recently that there was ‘no appreciation for Londoners’ and had to move back in with his mum so he didn’t have to sacrifice his creativity to pay rent.
Click on the image below to listen to the track over on spotify:
Marshall is a dynamic creative. Thames Water was released on his latest EP, A New Place To Drown, and it was accompanied with short film and a 208 page booklet produced by his brother Jack, consisting of artwork and poetry. With the stream of so much content, I gathered that Marshall wants you to be consumed with his ideas maybe to help gain an insight to his way of thinking. Many of his lyrics are obscure, for example ‘something in the water contorted her mind’ and I translate this as someone being lost to the bleak city life, but someone else could see it as something completely different. And this is why Arch Marshall’s music is good, because you can’t just listen to the melody, you have to really listen to the lyrics as well.
The progressive beat of this self-produced tracked works well and you can hear the subtle 90s hip hop beats Marshall has stated his admiration for,at least in the first half of the song. Interestingly though, in the second half there is a clear change of tempo. This half has more of an electronic vibe to it, which is different, but it works. Maybe this is Marshall’s way of show off his production skills or more plausibly, it’s Marshall trying to emphasise the significance of how much London is changing.
Every Wednesday, one of our young contributors picks a piece of music that has meant something to them in the past seven days. Get in touch if you have a track to tell us about!
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