Best Feet by the Alts

 

Do you love songs where the bass just does that slight advance run at the start to warn you what is about to happen? Do you enjoy a breathy rolling baseline and thumping drumbeat? Do you enjoy that simple but insistent keyboard sound that pins the song's credentials firmly to the space between your ears? Do you enjoy a voice that is both pure and full of character that makes you think you want to know the singer and find out what they mean? Does the moment the whole thing hit the chorus at exactly the right moment with just the right amount of lift fill you with joy?

Well, then go now and listen to Best Feet by the Alts. It will not disappoint you.

If I had to criticise, well I do have to criticise, that is after all, the point of me, I would say to be perfect a song needs to make itself comfortable, do what it needs to do and then call a halt, and Best Feet could be better if it was tighter. That is the difference between the perfect live song (which beats the audience until they get it) and the perfect recorded song (which lures you to play the song again or indeed to skip to the next track - I found myself enjoying every song on the LP but I did skip ahead sometimes when I'd heard enough of a song and I wanted to hear the next one).

But Best Feet opens an LP called Smoky Woods and every single song is a keeper. That is something very special. I played this on my phone as I rested last night and the nurses came over and listened and talked to me. Usually they make polite noises about my taste in music because they have grown used to me. They have promised to drink a cup of Becherovka with me to bring in my new year. I will leave this place in 2023 I think. I breathe well and I am approaching a weight where by bones are less pronounced and my heart less sore. I will go drink at places where people used to know me like The Donkey or Duffy's and people will be polite and slightly surprised as they assumed I was dead or had retired to my beloved Bohemia.  I will review more in 2023, I will review live bands that come through Leicester, I will review songs that inspire me to love and to hate.

As a finale I would also like to say that I have learned to understand the sprawling mess of stupidity that is the British health system. It saved my worthless life and it gave me a measure of love. It was clean, competent and capable and I was lucky. The people that work in healthcare are not all perfect, but by and large they are not paid a fair wage for the hours they work, and if they decided to work only as hard as their pay merited, we would all be truly forked.

So anyway, The Alts made good music. Tight, tuneful and well-measured. Give them a listen and raise a glass.