Some months ago, following her beautiful work as part of the Quiet, Constant Friends, the South African photographer/artist Amor Coetzee suggested we check out Medicine Boy, a Cape Town two-piece consisting of Lucy Kruger and Andre Leo. Needless to say we very much enjoyed the dream noise (their term), though we’d missed the boat in terms of writing about them, seeing as their last EP was released back in 2014.
Luckily, 2016 has changed all that with the announcement of their debut full-length album, Kinda Like Electricity. So far we only have one song to go by, but it’s enough to suggest that the brooding blend of dream pop and indie rock remains. ‘E.V.I.L.’ emerges with a dark energy, like some bluesy shoegaze track played on half-speed, the lyrics emerging like words from a forbidden love letter or the images of a late night fever dream (e.g. “I shaped the weather for my love / ’cause I know she likes to dance out in the thunder / I shaped the weather for my love / Well I guess that she was stuck in under cover”). It seems apt then that they posted a quote from Milan Kundera alongside the song on Facebook.
“Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love”
The song comes complete with a video. Directed by Mark Leonard, we find a suitably atmospheric dive-bar scene, complete with low lighting, smoky ambience, etc. Without wishing to spoil anything, the film develops to include a mysterious priest, a lot of hard staring, snake-handling, and an epiphanic/death-cultish conclusion. Check it out below:
Kinda Like Electricity is due out on the 15th August, but in the meantime you can grab ‘E.V.I.L.’ from the Medicine Boy Bandcamp page.