IDLE AFTERNOONS // GUFRA: SINGLE REVIEW

It is with pleasure, today, that I’m letting you into this one. This review is going to be ever so slightly different – you might already be familiar with GUFRA before I have to tell you a thing about them. The four-piece band from Hartlepool had broken up last year, leaving behind their old shoegaze sensibilities and taking the time to renovate it to a chilled, synth sound. This here is a resurrection – a word which among their faithful listeners has been spattered all over Twitter in anticipation for the band’s first new single Idle Afternoons.

Credits to @GUFRAGUFRA

Upon listening to the single, it struck me as living up to its name at once: it is uplifting yet languorous, like lazy summer days. This particular sound is so chilled out to listen to, with the quality to be able to blend seamlessly into the soundtrack of our own lives. There is no time and place for this song, no mood: the time for it is all the time.

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to interview GUFRA about this single – as a struggling music journalist, this was too kind of them. I don’t know about you, but one of the most interesting elements of a song – and by far the thing that says with me – are the lyrics. So naturally, I had to find out what influenced the lead to pen them: “Lyrically, when I first started writing it, I felt like it was going to become quite a sad song. It was based on a conversation I had with someone late one night. It wasn’t really an appropriate time to get my phone out to note down some lyrics, but that was definitely where the song started.”

The contrast between quite a buoyant, dreamlike instrumental and the lyrics tinged with a sort of melancholy, for me, is what makes this song wonderful. These elements of it, also along with the vocals, made it very reminiscent of the likes of Joy Division and an almost post-punk vein of music.

But perhaps, what I love above all, is after having asked about how Idle Afternoons was produced, was how they recorded it in the drummer’s bedroom: “very cheap, very DIY”. That is how they always do things. In an industry fine-tuned and reared in production rooms, the DIY movement – having its origins in the 1970s Punk scene – has been about producing music independently, and creating a relationship between the music and the fans directly. There’s something great about that. When there is no label, there is no money; and where there is no money you know, no matter what, there is passion.

Naturally, having just re-launched the band, I asked GUFRA what happens next. Idle Afternoons is the first single which will feature on their upcoming EP ready to be launched soon. When they do, if I were you I’d keep your eyes on your venues: I’m told they plan to gig as much as possible once it’s out.

So sit back, chill out, and listen to Idle Afternoons right here: