two blinks, i love you

“SELECTS” Pitchfork

“SPOTLIGHT ON…” The Independent (Q&A)

“cleverly written lyrics, soft vocals and light guitar riffs” The Evening Standard

“high-stakes vulnerability” The Line of Best Fit

“atmospheric and intoxicating” CLASH Magazine

“a more mature turn musically” DORK Magazine

OCTOBER 23rd - Liverpool songwriter two blinks, i love you releases new single ‘alright’ ahead of new EP - ep 2 out November 22nd via Heist or Hit.

‘alright’ takes a more upbeat tack to previous EP singles -  bringing scuzzy guitars to the fore, and relying on the sort of drum sound that channels the shuttle-rumble of a subway train, and incorporating LCD Soundsystem-esque synth blips.

On the track Liam explains:

“'alright' certainly has the most colourful life out of all the songs on ep 2. It started off as a throwaway song in a semi-secret side project I have that I usually use to offload songs I've written, but I always kept coming back to it, and as my affinity for more direct guitar music was creeping into the project, I thought it would be only fitting for this song to have a better life, and the rest is kind of history really. It's definitely a different sound on the ep but that's why I like it, it's like a different area of the New York sound that I love and wanted to show a little more with this band.”

An aesthetic ode to NYC the new EP pulls at the early 2000s alt-rock and folk output of the city. AKA Liam Brown, his structures lean on minimalist design philosophies; an example of prioritising only the essential. In this way, his music economically grants transit to those themes and sonic motifs that cut to the emotional core.

The aforementioned pilgrimage to New York late last year allowed Liam to live out his inner Fran Lebowitz fantasies. Cocooned in overpopulation, he found himself drunk & alone, singing the Human League at a karaoke bar after watching the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. The following morning, hungover and pairing a McGriddle with a black coffee he cut a figure of stillness while the iconography of the city shimmered all around him like fish scale. “I’ve always attached a lot of emotional weight to exploring ideas of feeling small and alone in a big city where there is so much energy and life.”

Alongside label Heist or Hit, it was deemed that in order to grasp at the atmosphere of the great Gotham, transplanting two blinks from the bedroom to the studio would be an important next step for the sound. More polish than spit. With Liam at the helm as producer, tracking took place at Nan’s House in Liverpool with Sophie Ellis engineering and mixing. “She facilitated and transferred all my creative decisions and ideas practically without any friction, which was super important to me. We worked rapidly, how I like to work, and it felt like there existed so much alchemy in our spontaneity.”  

Whilst the level of polish is increased in the sound - it still centres on coarse human emotion:

“ep 2” as a whole is combing through a lot of different feelings over the past year. Some of the songs on here are quite retrospective about loss. It presents itself in different ways that I didn’t even recognise until listening to them back; at the time I thought it was hidden in lots of subtext but in actuality it wasn’t. Some of the other songs however, are more love songs. I always love how direct and charming a plain and simple love song can be, not particularly the most poetic or the most dramatic by any means, but speaking of the smaller insignificant things and the idiosyncrasies of moments unique to your experience with love and everything surrounding that, whether that be friendship, the city you live in, or the city you visit for a week.”

ABOUT two blinks, i love you

two blinks, i love you springs from the prolific mind of Liverpool-based songwriter Liam Brown, previously known for his work as pizzagirl - where he built zany, aesthetic bedroom-pop worlds across two albums admired by VICE (Noisey), The Guardian, The FADER, PASTE, BBC 6Music and Radio 1, and more. 

Liam emerged in this new guise with the austere but emotive debut single ‘i love you’, which heralded his debut project ep 1 - which also featured the singles ‘carnegie hall’, ‘birthday surprise’ and ‘loveseat’. Last October’s scuzzy exploration ‘sentiment’ provided a stylistic evolution and placeholder.

He quickly caught the attention of Pitchfork, The Independent, The Evening Standard, The Line of Best Fit, CLASH, DORK and more with a finely honed sound calling to mind the wistful off-piste ruminations of Alex G, Yo La Tengo, Elliott Smith, The Mouldy Peaches or Wilco.

two blinks, i love you embraces the charm of imperfection, and the plaintive beauty of not knowing everything. Rather than hiding behind any misdirection he leans into this, and exposes an honest picture of himself.