It is grand, heartbreaking, full with emotionally loaded sounds, shakers, orchestral and filling melodies. It’s The Howl & The Hum‘s new video for single ‘The Only Boy Racer Left On The Island’. The band take a wide-eyed perspective, launching themselves into the grandeur of the song. Singer Sam Griffiths leads us through the story with his remarkable voice. He tells us how the song came to be: “It was inspired while we were on Orkney, when we saw one boy racer driving round and round the same roads overtaking our shitty little van, yet there was no-one else he was racing. I had loneliness on the brain, so this song came together as an anthem of lost youth, while not looking on this young view of masculinity particularly lightly. Musically it borrows from northern and Scottish folk music.
“This is a song about that guy with the monster-like revving engine roaring past you on the high street when you were younger, seeing him as trying to impress the girls, the guys, himself, and what happens to these young men as the years turn over: people leave, the town changes, but they refuse to grow up.”
The How & The Hum are humble and ambitious, something that shines through their musical library like a red wire. If I could I would give them fame, it’s Sam’s voice that makes me want to hand it all to them. It’s the close-to-earth and oh so normal vibes we get from their stories and their music. They won’t be the big band turning their backs to their fans, is what I hope. The band as well as I hope that 2020 will be their breakthrough year, and I’ll be proud to tell everyone that the first time I saw them play was in 2017 at Live at Leeds Ones to Watch, in front of about 20 people.
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