Tilly and the Wall are great. You may remember them as 'that band with a tap dancer instead of a drummer', but they are so, so much more than that one gimmick. Just listen to Rainbows in the Dark from their second album, Bottoms of Barrels:
This song is pretty much everything I want from music: heavenly horns, an insistent melody, a simple chord pattern, and loads of lyrics, passionately delivered. Oh, and two key changes. The tap shoes are in there too, but their presence sounds like the most natural thing in the world, not the deliberately quirky substitution that most people assume it to be.
Heavy Mood, Tilly and the Wall's most recent album, came out in October 2012, a solid three and a half years ago. If you ask me, a follow-up is long overdue, but the band have been worryingly quiet of late:
- Their official Facebook page hasn't been updated since last August.
- Their Twitter account has been dormant since September 2014.
- Most troublingly of all, the band's website - www.tillyandthewall.com - no longer even exists!
I don't mind waiting for my favourite bands while they work on their albums, but these omens seem to suggest that Tilly and the Wall are never coming back. If true, the world will be a slightly less colourful place for their loss.
There is a silver lining, though: while checking TatW's Facebook page for signs of life, I came across Yes You Are, a new band fronted by singer/bassist Kianna Alarid. You can hear one of their songs, World Without End, below; they sound more like Chairlift or HAIM than Tilly, and I'm hoping that Alarid's decision to form Yes You Are isn't a harbinger of Tilly and the Wall's demise, but these guys certainly sound like they'll be worth keeping an eye on, and I suppose they'll keep me going while I continue to wait for Heavy Mood's successor.
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