AFoR Advent: Laura Hocking
It’s odd how much a title can add to your impression of a song. With it’s current title and with the words taken at face value, this doesn’t exactly come across as a Christmas song at all. Sure, there’s a brief reference to the fact it’s getting close to Christmas and what that means, but it feels more like scene-setting than anything else. That said, the song used to be called, rather delightfully, Obligatory Christmas Song, and I’ll rarely turn down the opportunity to opine on the virtues of Laura Hocking’s songs.
Writing a blog like this, I inevitably hear a lot of new music. I like a lot of it, even if there’s a lot more that I don’t. Only a handful of artists tend to become those discoveries that make one excited about music in general. Since I’ve started this thing, Los Campesinos!, Johnny Foreigner, 4 or 5 Magicians and Laura Hocking have been the only ones that have really fallen into that category. The first three have gone on to put out debut albums that range between good (4 or 5 Magicians) and utterly perfect (Johnny Foreigner). Two years after first covering her, a proper Hocking release is apparently getting closer, but it still seems like far too long.
If you listen closely to the lyrics you’ll notice that the song seems to be about a 16 year old schoolgirl who’s fallen in love with her teacher and suspetcs – hopes? – that he’s made her pregnant. It can be seen as a travesty of the virgin birth – I wouldn’t be surprised if the narrator’s imagining the whole thing, and is truly a virgin with severe delusions.
The very fact you can talk about Laura’s song like this demonstrates how subtle and rich they are. For my money, she’s the best lyricist working in the UK at the moment, bar none. Look out for some incredible new versions of her songs, which I understand will be completed and online within weeks.