Sam Hirst’s single “Little Thief” is gracefully askance lo-fi rock, lyrically inventive in its casual utterances, hooks solidly hooking as honed from the various instrumental and melodic turns. It’ll feel a lot like summer even after the summer is gone.
There’s a kind of free-form fragility you expect to combust early doors but instead it thrives within the habitat of that gentle rumble and tonal canton. Sometimes the drums stagger, always finding their feet. The specimen of the feeling has been preserved in rare and unflawed form in that terrifying and hopeful manner only art allows.
“mother nature gets my goat/she just needs a neck to choke/so when she grabs me by the throat/I won’t be surprised”
There’s plenty of finesse that’s gone into it; the bass step-down playing off the established guitar lead, the snare snapping in a manner that awakens but only gently obliterates your brain, the backing vocal’s sustained waver girding the latter stages of a verse, a few symbol splashes toward the credits.
“I won’t help you escape, sorry / you tried so hard to get out of your body,”
The digital track is $1.50 USD on the bandcamp. Is a magic incantation worth that? Or you can repeatedly stream it on that other app I’m morally obliged not to link to. But you’ll have to play it 7,500 to get to the $1.50. Your assignment is to pair it with Gabriel Herrera Torres’ “The Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit” and reservedly rejoice in a private ceremony of your choosing.
Plainly & Painfully 