Mondo Love & Betrayal - Beyond The Rainy City

EARLY SUPPORT
Bill Brewster / Leo Mas / Neil Diablo / Steve KIW / S/A/M [Cafe Del Mar, Ibiza] / Andy Taylor [We Re The Sunsets, London] / Andy Pye [Balearic Social Club, Leeds] Andy Sims [Soft Rocks, UK]

The response to Mondo Love & Betrayal’s first musical missives, ‘Correspondence’ and ‘Your Latest’, were overwhelming, with DJs, journalists and radio hosts the world over responding rapturously to the duo’s timeless blend of nostalgic synth-pop influences, vivid aural colours, subtle nods to the dance-floor and classic songwriting.

The band, a collaboration between storied former Bent member and acclaimed house producer Neil ‘Nail’ Tolliday and sometime Torn Sail and Brown Fang member Henry Claude Scott, are not basking in the acclaim of their peers and the warm words of the world’s music press. Instead, they’re set to continue to build towards the release of their stunning, self-titled debut album – due to land in stores in September – with the release of another attractive and ear-catching single, ‘Beyond The Rainy City’.

Referencing the city Nottingham-raised Scott now calls home, Manchester, the song was initially inspired by a book “where our detached shadows inhibit an alternate realm”. It’s another example of Scott using his lyrics to put himself in another’s shoes – an approach frequently used by songwriters including Paul McCartney, Jarvis Cocker and Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant.

“I’m fascinated by characters who crave adoration but do everything to derail the possibility of that ever happening for a sustained period of time,” Scott explains. That thought inspired the song’s most distinctive lyrical hook (‘I’m a nobody, but I like it that way’), a sentence that both “begs for attention” and “acknowledges how desires aren’t all they are cracked up to be”.

In classic Mondo Love & Betrayal fashion, Tolliday’s accompanying music – a typically warm and attractive blend of shuffling machine drums, warming electric piano motifs, melancholic chords and spine-tingling piano motifs – plays to Scott’s strengths, with his thoughtful lyrics and emotive vocal delivery only emphasising the poignant, happy-sad dynamic at the heart of the pair’s collaborative work.

Attractive, perfectly pitched and musically tactile, with Tolliday utilising Scott’s vocalisations as part of his rich, kaleidoscopic production, ‘Beyond The Rainy City’ is another strong calling card from an artist on the rise. The release of their debut album can’t come soon enough.