Garlen Lo is back with his brand of humour and self deprecating lyrics in this song that he wrote at the age of 17. One thing I wanted to point out is that he’s really good at this homemade kind of sound – acoustic guitar recorded to tape and mixed so that you get the feeling he’s trying to break through the limitations of technology. It’s a great audio aesthetic! Add to that the mixing choices – the instruments and vocals are placed so that it cals back to the way the Beatles used to record – if you listen to a mono record, you’ll have the vocals in one ear and instruments being mixed left to right. This was the limitations of technology back then, and as this is deliberate, it works very well! Having grown up recording to tape, and using 4 track machines in the 80s and 90s this speaks to me. I was speaking to Will Farr a FOTN regular about this a couple of days ago, so it’s strange that this came up… anyway I mention Garlen’s self deprecating sense of humour check this out:
“I make you smile when I call you pretty baby
But it’s not of the kind I want
You’re just laughing at me, failing miserably
Maybe it’s the time I stop.”
Even at 17 he was self aware! I wonder if he will write a song about me writing a review of him on instagram. That would be meta. See what I did there?
According to his Spotify bio: Garlen Lo is a born-and-bred Londoner of Hong Kong-Chinese origin. Aged 7 he was raised by a wine-guzzling auntie who played country music at max volume. One Christmas, he got a guitar and took naturally to writing drunken singalongs with twee wordplay.
He formed an unruly, skinny-jeaned indie band in the mid-2000s, but after that imploded, tried to become a respectable member of society. Not quite succeeding at that either, he resumed his love for songwriting during the pandemic. The result is this.
He is a one-man band: playing all the instruments, singing, producing, and making the music videos. Songs about lost love seems to be his thing. His Mastermind subject would be The Beatles.
*For a short time, he went by the artist name Hong Kong Cockney but lacked the confidence to see it through. He likes it as a nickname though, like Springsteen’s The Boss.
