Fact of the day: the last Her Space Holiday LP, ‘The Young Machines’, was the chill-inducing lost album of 2003. ‘My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend’ is a timely reminder of its perfect marriage of love, quiet despair, laptop beats and cautiously beautiful indie-rock dynamics.
Trading in bleeding heart confessionals is a risky business, but in the hands of HSH – that’s solitary songwriter Marc Bianchi – it’s refreshingly original, whinge-free and slapped around a nice violin loop. The forlorn lyrics, like many of his songs based around isolation and a departed loved one, even manage to sound like nobody has ever used words quite like that before. Similar feelings, you suspect, to those Bianchi felt for his former beau before things turned sour. “I did this myself/it's a sick cry for help...” is the self-analysis, and you can’t help but feel sympathetic.
“Now the writers can say ‘we were right all along/you can't make someone love you with a song’” is a defeated observation, but given it’s followed with the admission, “it just feels strange that I sing songs for another girl”, maybe there are already happier times on the horizon. With such brilliant results from pain, however, pray it all goes wrong again.
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9Adam Anonymous's Score