My dear north-american readers, this one goes out for you. Not because I believe you’ll eat up this band like manna (although you *should*), but because this northern Portugal-based quartet was kind enough not to name itself “Sensible Footballers” and alienate you forever; I imagine you’d sit there, honey-drenched pancake in fork, pondering on why the hell don’t they have any songs about Tim Tebow or any other jacked-up, helmet-welding, advertisement-darling m(a)(e)ss of a human, and upon discovering that on the other side of the Atlantic we don’t care much about the Superbowl you’d consider nuclear retaliation and turn one of your oldest allies (true, btw) into Europe’s answer to the Sahara Desert. Emanuel Botelho, Manuel Justo, Filipe Azevedo and Hugo Alfredo Gomes go by the name Sensible Soccers, and they were born out of a very small scene that called itself, and I’m literally translating it here, “unemployed pop”, which is a far better choice of words than “hypnagogic” or whatever the fuck hipster musicians call what they do in their bedrooms nowadays. There’s nothing “hipster” about Sensible Soccers, though; think of them as our answer to the wonderful Disco Inferno, even if they themselves have never listened to Disco Inferno (I asked them, they went “what?”). They’ve existed for two years now and have already played in major festivals such as Milhões de Festa and Paredes de Coura, and even played a set in Lisbon’s Boiler Room (I’ll give you a special gift if you can guess, in that video, who I am), and you can check out their music on Bandcamp, which, hopefully, will get you asking for more and salivating like a dog as soon as I mention that they’re putting out a record later on this year. “Sofrendo Por Você” (“Suffering For You”, and now you’ll get the pun in this post’s title) is the advance single, a song they have been playing live for a while now but only recently had the guts to record. It will come out as a special single on Groovement, this very Sunday, and it’s a wonderful 9-minute upbeat track about lost love, which is a very strange kind of paradox – it should be sad, miserable music, but it really isn’t, and it’ll put a smile on your face and possibly make your head nod to the beat. Feel free to check a live version here, although the low sound quality doesn’t make it justice, and dance away the pain of not having your beautiful red miracle kissing you right now. Maybe you’ll even start enjoying footb- oh, sorry, soccer.
PAC