Adam & Elvis: Hanging Tree

Bonded not only by blood but a taste for finding humour in the macabre, Patrick and Tom Malone are brothers whose sibling intuition extends to a penchant for songs as melodic as they are bizarre. Cut-throat guitars, dirty basslines and contorted synthesisers are their tools as the brothers pen hook-filled numbers with strange, poetic lyrics, often influenced by the stark realism in the wordplay of Patrick’s heroes Leonard Cohen and Charles Bukowski.

Adam & Elvis: Hanging Tree

This thought-provoking, pull-no-punches prose is set to a musical backdrop of exhilarating wall-of-sound pop and primitive punk energy, unleashed by Patrick on guitar/vocals and Tom on bass/vocals respectively, with the aid of Juliet Styles (synths/saxophone), Steve Wraight (vocals/percussion) and Dan Robershaw (guitar). The Berkshire band have been championed by regional radio and performed their gripping live shows on the same bill as Fat White Family, The Zombies and The Correspondents, as well as numerous festivals across the south of England. Not before time, given the blistering impact of ‘Hanging Tree’, the wider world is about to get a feel for the Adam & Elvis oeuvre, culminating in a debut album release proposed for early 2017.

The sorry tale of a young intellectual who, despite his rationalism, loses his mind over unrequited love, ‘Hanging Tree’ conforms to Adam & Elvis’s tragi-comic inclinations. Sonically, however, the song is all vivacious alt-pop, charging along a crookedly mellifluous path as the Malone brothers’ vocals veer from moody baritone to full-throttle tenor. Sawtoothed guitars sear and the rhythm section thunders while ‘Hanging Tree’ revolves around its Grandaddy-meets-Pixies chorus that provides a soaring indie-disco chant-along belying the morbid moral. The stylish video (shot by Balla Kingston, Craig Rogers and Antonio Pineda) captures the band in ebullient mood at UK Live Sound studios in Reading, where ‘Hanging Tree’ was produced.

Adam & Elvis: Hanging Tree

Adam & Elvis: Hanging Tree Lyrics: