About 'No Vacancy' (Out April 23):
Written and performed by Ruby Gilbert 
Trumpet by Eamon Dilworth
Recorded and produced by Aaron Shanahan (Miami Horror, Dream Dali, Sunday)

No Vacancy

‘Kilometres’ is a travelling song that invites the listener along for a backseat daydream; it’s a number that’s in conversation with the past while hitching a ride somewhere new and untravelled.
 
The aesthetic of the song is reminiscent of the ‘good old days’ with its worn-in acoustic guitar rhythm punctuated by melodic string runs and marching drum accents.

The production is honest with a light-touch, harking back to analogue recordings of the late 1960s and 70s akin to the output of Neil Young or Gillian Welch/David Rawlings.

Songwriter/singer Mark Curtis penned ‘Kilometres’ as a spiritual reply letter to Woodie Guthrie’s ‘The Car Song’; a naively fun ode to motor vehicle travel written and recorded in the 1940s and performed by everyone from Dylan, Springsteen and Donovan to (most likely) your own parents and grandparents. 

   
Marks lyric evokes the novelty and enamour of Guthrie’s work and playfully marries it to unglamorous slices of banal modernity like paying for fuel, waiting at traffic lights and distracting phone use. 

He creates a bittersweet stream of images held in subtle tension and uses ‘Kilometres’ as a vehicle to go panning in the murky waters between the timeless and the everyday.

Are the flannelettes releasing a song about the inexpressible, one-way directionality of time, linking all souls together in a mysterious continuum? or is it simply a song about the metric system? Have a listen and find out for yourself.

Kilometres  - Mark Curtis And The Flannelettes

Compelling songwriting with quirk, delivered by a fun, alt country, string band from Adelaide, South Australia Kaurna Yerta

Kilometres - Mark Curtis And The Flannelettes

MarkCurtis and the Flannelettes

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