Morning Parade hail from the Essex satellite town of Harlow and they know the pleasures and frustrations of towns like that better than most. As Steve explains of the town, which is still struggling to adjust to the decline of its manufacturing base, “Harlow’s like a weird bubble where no-one really enters and no-one really leaves.”
Harlow isn’t quite Royston Vasey from The League Of Gentlemen, but the point still stands. Solace of sorts came in the town’s one live music venue, The Square where Steve andPhil were gradually joined by three friends, who would become their bandmates in a nascent band scene. But even there they felt like outsiders. Like any youth movement through the ages, the kids of Harlow fell into two camps, the mainstream ‘townies’ and the skate-punk ‘grebos’ with little room for anyone inbetween. And of course, inbetween was exactly where they found themselves.
What followed was years in identikit rock bands and years of thankless day jobs ensued. But it was what they did with their weekends, during the overspill from the nineties rave era, that would point them in the direction that would lead them to where they are now. Chad remembers, "Round here there was a new thing to do. Playing guitar was fun but on a Saturday you wanna go and get smashed and that is where the music imprinted itself on our souls. It was a different kind of euphoria."
So acts like Daft Punk and Aphex twin were to make a profound impression on the fivesome. The live instrumentation of guitar music and the escapism and euphoria of dance were to combine to define Morning Parade's sound. It’s safe to say they got there in spectacular fashion.
‘A&E’ is the first song where they cracked it so it stands to reason that this will be the song that launches them onto the national stage. Yet while it’s powered energetically along by 4/4 dynamics, this is no ‘new rave’ fantasia. Lyrically, like all their songs it’s rooted in the world they know, about everyday scenarios and the people around them with a quest to elevate the normal to the fantastical.
Even their band name was inspired by their surroundings. On returning bleary-eyed from the forest raves of their teens, they would be struck hard, possibly giggling, by the contrast between those party hordes returning by tube in the opposite direction of those on the commuter belt. Chad remembers, “Whether it’s the people on the way to work or the social aftermath, you’re always in this morning parade.”
'A &E ' will be available digitally and on 7". The digital bundle will feature the b-side 'Marble Attic' as well as remixes by Millions Like Us and Dash Berlin.