This excellent single disc anthology from London’s Tempertwig is out on Audio Antihero in a couple of weeks and is cracker. We’ll have a review for you next week. In the meantime, you can catch up on the band and listen to a few tracks.

Tempertwig (1999-2004) were a three piece from South London. They featured Ben and Adam Parker of the acclaimed groups Nosferatu D2 and The Superman Revenge Squad Band. The cult work of Ben and Adam Parker has found fans at Public Radio International , Drowned in Sound, Gold Flake Paint, DIY Mag, BBC Radio, TLOBF and many more.

Fake Nostalgia: An Anthology Of Broken Stuff is a collection of Parker brothers material from their early and urgent days. Lyrical, frantic, minimalistic and eclectically unpredictable, theirs is a sound which has launched labels a decade apart. This collection is released by Audio Antihero Records, who formed in 2009 to release Nosferatu D2’s lone album, and, the fledgling Randy Sadage label, who are debuting in 2019 to release this Tempertwig anthology. This music means a lot to a few.

Welcome to HeartSongs, our regularly scheduled (probably) look at songs and the people who write them. We spoke to Benjamin Shaw about his new single ‘Terrible Feelings!’.

“I think ‘Terrible Feelings!’ was the first song I really sat down to write for this album. And the first new song I’d come up with in what felt like a very long time. The title came first definitely (with punctuation and everything - some of my finest work I think) and even became the inspirational album title for a while, Benjamin Shaw sings… Terrible Feelings!, I still think I missed a trick there.

At risk of a lawsuit, I’m pretty sure the melody came to me while I was listening to the only other artist from my home town of Blackpool in the UK, Jack Cooper. I’m not even sure which song because I can’t pick it out now, but the melody was nothing like his (I swear). I quickly turned it off and recorded mine on my phone there and then, and built on it from there - repeating and moving patterns and found sounds on the laptop, which seems to have become my way over the years. Shouts out Jack Cooper, he doesn’t know me, but his album Sandgrown is sweet.

Lyrically, as with most of my songs, it started out as a collection of short insults about my work colleagues that I put into Google Keep whenever they come into my head. My Google Keep is substantial. And then, as always, when I sit down to try and arrange the insults into an actual song and do something creative, my own head starts creeping in and the songs quickly descend into self-obsessed artistic terror, self-pity, and in this case, Dirty Dancing references.

I’m a big fan of this song though. It felt like a turning point after having not written much for a good few years. I’d finally come up with an actual song, even if it was just terrible feelings.”

Listen to ‘Terrible Feelings!’ here

Lyrics:

Terrible Feelings!

Hey apocalypse, it's nice to know you still be trying

To lift me by the hips

And make believe like I be flying away,

you're all terrible people, with terrible clothes, go away

but I don't care, I got no dog in the race

So do me a solid, do me again and again

terrible feelings but I got nothing to say

Aw hey its you, I don't forget a face

Naw I'll do it, it's a piece of cake

ah've nothing to hide, I just wanna go home today

oh it'll blow over, everyone makes mistakes