Locksley
A Heaven Made Built On Harmonies And Women And Old, Dead Guys
Aug 8, 2009
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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
The only heaven that New York band Locksley would be interested in passing away to is one where there are microphones already set up and plugged in, instruments are at the ready, and there are stage lights poised to flatter and make everything look like it's happening in the dead of night, so that at any passing moment, they'd be able to go up to their many rock and roll heroes and coax them into a sing-a-long. They could sidle up to Keith Moon or John Lennon and just say, "You have no idea what an honor it is to meet you. My life - you know, the one down there - was built around my appreciation of your art. Could I interest you in a jam - just one song maybe? I mean, look, everything's all ready to go." The members of Locksley, all speaking together as it would be the best way to muster the courage to approach the greats, could be seen sweating, with excited crystals blinking in their wide eyes. And Moon, Lennon, anyone they could think to approach from those formative 1960s years of rock and roll music, would be obliged to play along with these scruffy rookies because that's just how it works up there in heaven. The greats will indulge in heaven. It's the one that they'd be okay with being in forever. The crowds would be great and there would always be a raging epidemic of nostalgia, everyone talking about how the sounds and the times used to be, even if they were able to live it out in the skins and bodies of their prime. These would be scores of legendary musicians happily reminiscing about their moments, lost of the crankiness that old age brought when they were asked by reporters for the umpteenth time if they thought that they were encouraging a counter-culture or a new movement or anything else that a guy like Bob Dylan or Lou Reed would find to be prickly about. They'd be able to enjoy themselves and guys like those in Locksley could have all of their wildest fantasies come true. Locksley is a band that will all gather around one microphone singing in the direction of the other, two inches from all the mouths, hearing the three parts of harmonies better, getting it right because, really, what more is there for them to enjoy than those voices coming together smoothly, in a manner that encourages people to think symphonically, to hear things in grander frames, as if they were coming from the high beams and the rooftops, just descending from the clouds or something as magnificent as that. These are songs about the proverbial collisions between man and woman - love as it sticks temporarily and love as it breezes on by without blinking more often. These are the odes to those feelings that feel as if they're 50 years old and as newly minted sensations, ones that has no great definition or form yet, ones that grandchildren and great grandchildren will still be musing and fretting over until the world gets blown up, like it most undoubtedly will. Until then, there is this thing called love and there are lovely bands like Locksley here to either make some meager sense of it or to just make you feel as included as a couple of outsiders can feel.
Locksley Official Site
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