Sliding Into Your Playlists: Oranj Son Release New Single ‘Sliding Doors’
For a town best known for its car plants and oil refineries, Ellesmere Port has assembled a far more romantic proposition in Oranj Son. Their new single Sliding Doors is a reflection on missed opportunities and what might have been, channelling the best of their Northern indie forebears.
With the band having played shows around Merseyside for the past decade, you may well have already witnessed them at events like Sound City – or maybe you caught one of their guerrilla gigs this summer, when they descended on various parks and beaches to gift lucky passers-by with a stripped-back acoustic set.
Now that summer’s in the rearview, the band have been reunited with their synthesisers and come armed with new material. Sliding Doors is a perfect crystallisation of the band’s sound, and was produced by Chris Taylor, known for his work with artists from Blossoms to Brooke Combe.
Opening with a piercing chime of guitars, the song’s intensity mounts as Kieran Linford’s vocal soars above the lush arrangement of synths and subtle percussion. The song’s ambience wheels between catharsis and restraint, all beautifully rounded off with the most effervescent of solos.
Despite undergoing a few lineup shifts since starting out, Oranj Son’s chemical makeup has stayed the same. Just as earlier songs took inspiration from their hometown’s industrial environs, a certain strain of psychogeography continues to play a part in their latest efforts.
Their songs dream up high rise flats, motorway bridges, and even Vauxhall Motors FC, a football club founded for factory workers. These ultra-specific local references have resonated with a wider audience, and last autumn the band even transported themselves all the way to Japan to play a string of shows.
In these days of sharp decline, there’s an eerie-ness to the manmade landscape which Oranj Son don’t shy away from, but it’s one which is neatly counterpointed by the keenly felt, searingly human lyricism. Give Oranj Son a listen if you’re a fan of Echo & The Bunnymen, A Flock of Seagulls, OMD – all those seminal 80s indie bands who managed to find alchemy in the urban sprawl.
Stream Sliding Doors now.
Follow Oranj Son on Instagram @oranjson.
