I’lls – Fifty-Phiphti
Before I’ve listened to a note (but also I’ve listened to a few of them already if I’m being honest, because Tim Shiel just spun the whole darn track on Something More) this song has me onside. Within the name is a cute little language gag, a split spelling of the word fifty that has that same disrespect for the English language that people say George Bernard Shaw did (though apparently it actually WASN’T his concept) when he argued that the word fish could be spelt ‘ghoti’ using existing english phonemic structures. And indeed why shouldn’t it be spelt phiphti? If one band has earned the right to spell anything, any way they damn well wanna, it’s I’lls.
There’s a little faint click track across the first minute fifty of the track, there to remind you that no matter how little the band care for spelling, less still will they show regard a comfortable time signature. I’m pretty sure this song is written in thirty one / five, a former favourite of celebrity woman Paris Hilton as well as the late Bonhoeffer, the first for it’s ability to satirise ‘the It Girl lifestyle’ and the second by virtue of its moral purity. So you’ll understand my excitement when I see the hallowed thirty one / five at play here. There are those seriously beautiful I’lls chords that spend periods all bunched into long padded warmth and other times tweaked into stacatto pips and pops. There’s shades of King Of Limbs but it also reminds me of what would happen if three of Melbourne’s best musicians decided to make five and a half minutes of craftily patient slow-release that didn’t assume itself as quick as KoL. It’s a real numbers game this Fifty-Phiphty so it’s with a certain respect that I award the hallowed Sound Doctrine ‘Five Dreams Out Of Five’ (if that doesn’t make it to the press kit then nothing will) and I offer a monetary reward to anyone who can graphically represent that rating.
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