Biography
It all gets pretty absurd. Our relationships and our heartbreaks, our identities and our insecurities, they end up distorted by the funhouse mirror of online life and soundtracked by a chorus of mind-numbing discourse. It’s enough to make you sick, and it’s definitely enough to make you laugh. That’s the intersection Ben Hambro of vegas water taxi sits at on the London alt-country band’s new EP, first time listener. The sequel to October’s long time caller, now to be released together as an LP, it sees Hambro widen his gaze from the post-breakup rumination of the previous EP to explore what it even means to crave love in a world ruled by image obsession and pop individualism.
vegas water taxi was born from the ashes of the funky electro-pop project Lazarus Kane, though it couldn’t really be more different. There, Hambro was playing a character — an enigmatic American rock star who spouted nonsense in interviews. By the time that project broke down, though, he was tired of only presenting art to the world while pretending to be someone else. A chance encounter with a friend, former vegas water taxi drummer Leo Lawton, led him to try to make something closer to his heart. It would be an exercise in the contemplative, wry alt-country of bands he loved like Wilco and Silver Jews, with songs that were “as honest and as painful as they need to be.”
long time caller, first time listener are the follow-ups to the band’s 2023 debut album, things are gonna be alright, on which Hambro shaped his observational wit on tracks like “creative director blues” and “six music dads”. But on long time caller / first time listener, vegas water taxi truly comes into its own. Hambro and his bandmates — bassist/guitarist Fred Lawton, drummer/guitarist Charlie Meyrick and backing vocalist Molly Shields, plus collaborators Rhodri Brooks on pedal steel and Holly Carpenter on violin — are flying now. The songs are melodic and accessible, verging on the anthemic. Hambro’s vocals are buttery and loose, the guitars expressive and joyful. “The intention for me was to write the best songs I could possibly write,” Hambro says. “They’re like pop songs — super sad pop songs.”
Yet for Hambro, a song’s only worth writing if it makes him laugh, and long time caller / first time listener are both full of smartly constructed jokes: some bitter, some self-deprecating, some observational. long time caller kicked off with “chateau photo”, a track about realising you’ve been excluded from a social circle via an Instagram post, on which Hambro sings: “She left me for a guy who’s working in PR / He’s putting out a press release that I’m crying in a bar”. On the bouncy, twangy lead single “birkenstocks” he reached the conclusion: “If you suffer for your art, small plates is where you start.” The highlight of that first EP came with “jerry,” an incredibly lovable country-rock cut on which Hambro pictures an ex’s perfect date with a new guy.
The tracks on first time listener are darker and thornier, yet still with an indefatigable gallows humour. It opens on “jamie xx”, a leisurely, laid-back track that sounds deceptively like a love song. But in between the starry-eyed choruses, on which the narrator begs someone to “tell me you love me at Jamie XX”, is an interrogation of the compulsion to remain in a stale relationship and build a façade of a life. “I was imagining a couple trying to save their relationship at a day festival in London. I just kept imagining this tragicomic slow mo scene of them arguing during a Jamie XX set, like the end scene in Aftersun,” Hambro remarks.
The infectious riff of “ozempic (celebrity weight loss anxiety blues)” soundtracks a meditation on Hambro’s lifelong struggle with body dysmorphia, combined with the trend of glamorous drug-assisted weight loss. It’s punctuated by smirking lines like “I’m gonna learn to DJ / And I’m gonna lose some weight / And I’m going to a sex club / I’ve got an ego to inflate.” Meanwhile, the hushed “New Irish Boyfriend”, with its snare brushes and distant piano plinks, examines the concept of relationship as branding exercise — does a hard-launch of the titular Irish boyfriend bring you closer to trendiness in the age of Fontaines D.C. and Paul Mescal?
The EP closes with “brat summer”, the final song written for the project and its most absurdist. It caps off Hambro’s sly skewering of the most maddening parts of modern culture by reimagining George Orwell for the 2020s. “I was imagining a future where the police were rounding up people who hadn’t participated in Brat Summer, with the only broadcast channels left to humans the Joe Rogan podcast and Call Her Daddy. In the end, the protagonist escapes with Matty Healy and sets LA on fire with a Bic lighter,” Hambro says. “Fill my pockets with stones and drown me in Liquid Death,” he coos; “In my cozy era, I’ll wind up dead.”
The dual EPs were recorded in two halves, between North and South London. With producer Louis Milburn, Hambro aimed to capture the band’s free and unpolished live energy. Every song was allowed three takes. “I don’t believe in doing a billion takes. I like capturing magic in the moment, and then, once the magic’s on the tape, you can fiddle a bit and refine,” Hambro says. “It has to feel as live as possible to capture the feeling.” The result is music that’s warm and human, like the best alt-country tends to be. It’s vegas water taxi’s unremitting authenticity that makes it feel like a shred of sanity amidst the noise.
