POSTDATA @ The Borderline, London 03/02/2010

Do you like Iron and Wine?
Do you like Wintersleep?
You do! Marvellous. I always knew you had great taste. Well, you’d probably enjoy the debut album from Wintersleep front man Paul Murphy. Under the monica of ‘Postdata’, Murphy’s songs are stripped down to the barest of instruments, and the rawest of lyrics. This album definitely has a personal touch. Haunting, atmospheric and painfully beautiful.
London’s Borderline is the setting for Postdata’s “seventh show ever”, and where I got to catch what could well be a fleeting glimpse of this duo. The place has had a face lift, faux wood laminate flooring and varnished wood surfaces make the Borderline far more inviting, and as light and spacious as you can make a tiny bunker beneath Charing Cross Road. There is actually a fair number of people in the club (although, I suspect mainly to see headliner David Bazan of Pedro the Lion fame) as Paul and fellow Wintersleep bandmate Tim D’eon take the stage. There’s a frightly English ripple of appreciation as the pair open with Lazarus. Paul, through sods law, manages to break a string on his one and only acoustic guitar but soldiers on onto one of the album highlights for me: In Chemicals, in which the ever dexterous D’eon seems to sprout additional limbs as his hands flit across an impressive number of keyboards and even a melodica for a few songs.
The set rolled on with a nice mix of album tracks, and the more obscure b-sides and bonus tracks only available with certain pre orders such as the dark yet sweet Easter and Blood Black. Murphy interspersing the tracks with words of thanks and compliments on the venues new look.
The pair begin to wrap up their forty minute set with another stand out track from the album Paranoid Clusters, which only just made the cut due to it, apparently “really needing a G-string”. Thankfully for me, it stayed in the set and was immense. Sounding like a track which could have sat happily on Eddie Vedder’s 2007 ‘Into The Wild’ soundtrack, ‘Paranoid Clusters’ sounds rather autobiographical and Murphy paints a vivid mental picture through his soulful and unique delivery. Postdata bring things to a close with another non-album track Close The Window and with some more heartfelt thanks; leave the stage, to far more crowd noise than they were greeted with – and more what they deserve.
I make no secret that I am a massive Wintersleep fan, and it did feel odd to see these two without the rest of the band. This is no bad thing though. The stripped-down-acoustic style not only suits these particular songs, but also Murphy’s voice. He made a wise choice in steering this collection of songs away from the full band set up to really let the lyrics and sentiments shine through without having to battle against electric guitars. Both have their place, and both are superb in their own ways. I just hope this isn’t the last we hear of Postdata…

check out Postdata at www.postdatamusic.com

check out more of Ben’s photography at www.bengrubb.co.uk