The Hours - Big Black Hole
The founder members of The Hours - Antony Genn and Martin Slattery - logged time as session men during the Britpop years, playing with bands such as Pulp, Black Grape and Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. But it seems their most loyal famous friend is not a musician but an artist: Damien Hirst.
Brit Art's infamous cattle rustler has not only provided the sleeve art for both their albums (2007's Narcissus Road and it's forthcoming follow-up See The Light) but has signed the band to his own record label, Is Good, and acted as art director for their last two videos.
The first, See The Light, found Sienna Miller sloping around in a hospital gown and staring at four wall-mounted cow carcasses. The latest, for new single Big Black Hole (out Monday) is only slightly less mordant, with the band performing in a room full of clocks while images of disintegrating flesh and skulls flash up; the grim reaper turns up looking ... well ... grim.
Given Hirst's involvement - this is, after all, a man famous for cows floating in formaldehyde and jewel-encrusted skulls - and the fact the videos were both made by American History X director Tony Kaye, their bleak imagery is hardly surprising. But the music is nowhere near as depressing.
Though Big Black Hole is a sort of audio intervention with Genn exhorting a friend to give up his vices or end up in an early grave, musically the song is almost euphoric with its pounding piano line. The Hours have a knack for writing this kind of song - soaring indie-rock anthems that soundtrack compilers fall over themselves for. People Say, the stand out track from Narcissus Road has even popped up on Hollyoaks while Ali In The Jungle, also from that album, slotted smoothly onto the soundtrack of FIFA 08. Don't be suprised if, despite its dark subject matter, Big Black Hole ends up as a sound bed on BBC1 or as the heart-wrenching backing for a Match Of The Day package on a relegation battle.
[Watch the video to Big Black Hole here]
Mic Wright
6:41 PM | 03/04/2009
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