Otherish wish things could have been different on their wistfully dreamy new single and video If Only — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
The dreamy leadoff single from the Belfast / Bristol band’s third LP How Lucky We Are Being Us And Each Other (out July 28), the nostalgic and melancholy If Only captures the lush, moody orchestration of ’90s Britpop groups like Blur and Elbow, but with a touch of timelessness. While the band cite classic figures like David Bowie and Burt Bacharach as influences, traces of psychedelia, post-punk and modern eccentrism swirl through their new album’s panoply of colors and textures. If there were such a thing as indie music’s answer to a song of summer, If Only might very well be it.
Four misfits with three distinct songwriters in their ranks, it took Otherish decades to get here. In fact, they weren’t here just two years ago, they can’t tell you how it happened, and they can’t even describe what it sounds like.
When Belfast natives Francis Kane, Paul Bradley and his brother Mark emigrated to the English city of Bristol in the ’80s, they arrived in time to make an ill-fated bid for alt-rock success by forming the band Me. Looking back with tongue in cheek, they assess their achievements back then as “not enough even to render cult status.” What they did achieve, however, was a musical bond that never went away. Which is why the music they’ve been putting out as Otherish since 2021 sounds like the work of a highly seasoned group of music veterans.
Quietly, almost imperceptibly — and most often entirely out of view — inspiration comes knocking and entices someone to veer off the beaten track. In the darkness of the unknown, where it’s too far to turn back but there’s still no sense of where one might arrive… that is the place where Otherish find themselves on How Lucky We Are Being Us And Each Other.
Startlingly fresh, the new album lands like a welcome splash of cold water to the face, immediately recognizable as a work that captures a band stepping decisively out onto their own limb. Conversely, the music bears a familiar quality, as Otherish somehow wrap their arms around the full arc of rock music and emerge with a seamless amalgamation — familiar and inviting yet offbeat, with an unmistakable sense that this music could only have been made right now.
Like an author who’s spent a lifetime borrowing books from the library and realizes that their own voice came into fruition somewhere along the line, Otherish have invented their own language, which continues to evolve on new tracks such as The Strange Rain, The Good, The Real, The Beautiful and leadoff single If Only.
Seasoned by all the years of playing together, it’s as if Otherish can’t help but draw from a kind of unwitting intuitive wisdom. They would probably balk — maybe even laugh out loud — at the suggestion that there’s any wisdom involved. “It shouldn’t work,” says Kane, “but it does.”
Watch the video for If Only above, sample more sound from Otherish below, and follow them on Facebook.
