Bacchanalia Magazine

by Reb Jordin

On March 8th Slow Team, a post-modern alternative three-piece band based in Leeds, released their single ‘A Lover’s Mind’. The grunge fuelled song beautifully captures the chaos of love by conveying how it is a deeply layered emotion. Love is often romanticised as one of life’s great prizes whilst in reality love can affect you negatively as well, as our minds aren’t always as strong as our emotions.

The song opens on a haunting note that feels almost unnatural, perhaps foreshadowing the contents of the carefully crafted lyrics. Listeners are presented already in the first verse with heartbreaking but painfully poetic lyrics like, ‘I love you more than I love myself.’ Slow Team present love as an all-consuming entity here, where one will give themselves over entirely as they believe the one they love is greater than themselves. This paints love as a controlling and devouring force telling the listener the lengths that some people go too as they are
blinded by it.

‘A Lover’s Mind’ then bursts into a cacophony of booming drums and a distant bass whilst female vocals are layered to add to the already eerie atmosphere. The lyrics, ‘you’ll kill yourself for life. you’ll kill your health and mine’ convey the manipulations behind love where one person will bring another down with them as they possess their heart and therefore their better judgement. This paints the image of a careless person not considering how their actions affect others so ruin them as they ruin themselves. Slow Team follows this closely with the lyrics, ‘all I get is lies.’ These words tell the listener that sometimes the people you love will hold their power over you in a negative way and abuse that power for their own personal gain at your expense.

Soon the single enters a moment with a grungy and chaotic nature where the shredding guitar and pelting drums mixed with the pleading vocals mimic the turbulence of both falling in love and falling out of it. The instruments are deeply entwined reminiscent of our emotions being twisted with another’s so that we will be completely loyal to that person and silent to the faces of others if need be. This can lead to toxicity and resentment in a relationship as we can’t leave the person we have grown to love even though they may be deeply flawed.

The single closes with a lone voice singing ‘now you’re failing by design’ with just the solemn strum of a guitar as support marking both the end of the song and perhaps the end of the relationship. This leaves listeners to question is love always a positive emotion or is it sometimes just unhealthy infatuation?

So go and give ‘A Lover’s Mind’ a listen and watch the accompanying music video to support the amazing Slow Team as we anticipate future music and the coming show dates.

Photography by Luke Hallett