by Dreaminess can often be a musical adjective adjacent to wishy-washy, but Bristol musician Lande Hekt thankfully ladens her end-of-summer sonic shimmer with enough hooks to leave you with something to cling to.
This latest single, ‘Favourite Pair of Shoes’, is a spacey, reverb-drenched, and emo-like pop hit that is perfectly timed for freshers week and all the hysterical melodrama that goes along with it. The fact that “this could be forever” is the most discernible vocal line in the mix feels perfectly apt.
Hekt exhibits a real songwriting confidence with the track, perhaps borne from the fact that this is her first solo album to be released since her old band, Muncie Girls, called it a day. While she has two previous solo releases to her name, going it alone in a more thorough sense seems to have imbued the song with a similar feeling of emergence.
Road trips and a great first chapter of a new book are what spring to mind as she softly conjures the spirit of ‘Archie, Marry Me’ in this propulsive hit. Its major tones and sustain lend it a feeling of positive momentum and just a tinge of nostalgia in the set-back vocals.
“I wrote this song when I was listening to a lot of The Bats and The Chills,” she explains. “It probably sounds nothing like any of that Flying Nun stuff but that was what was inspiring me at the time.” While in terms of the musicology Hekt is right, it doesn’t sound like that, but you can certainly pick up the influence in the moodiness of the production.
But the fact that it is so hook-laden gives this moody production a glowing sense of gorgeous duality. As she explained, “Despite the lines that lean towards despair, I think this is quite a hopeful song. It’s about rising out of a pit of hopelessness and doing something really positive.” And that positivity, as the song decrees, could be forever, hence its clever looping nature.
Speaking about how the track came about, Hekt concludes, “The song features my old friend and longtime collaborator Samuel Bedford. We first sang together when we were 16, we recorded a song together for his folk solo project, then we were in an indie rock band together when we were 21 called Selfish Son. Sam sang on my song Kitchen in 2020 and now he sings on this song and Coming Home. Each of these collaborations are five years apart which is tidy.”
Washing over you like the waves of the sea in a dream just about strange enough to remember, ‘Favourite Pair of Shoes’ bodes well for Hekt’s forthcoming Lucky Now release. The song’s sweet croon is peacefully addictive.
