Noughties By Nature #102: Kat Flint - Fearsome Crowd

Kat Flint’s 2006 debut was a quiet masterpiece of songs about the everyday world we find ourselves in, made in a living room with borrowed favours and a car boot orchestra of children’s toy instruments. Its opener, Fearsome Crowd, is a four minute poem to London life – its mundanity, the strained quietness of millions of people sharing the same space, the same time but sharing little else but the emptiness and anonymity that comes with living in the capital.

In a city where the drunks are dressed in suits worth twice my rent, they fall asleep
On the shoulders of the strangers on the trains that map out every working week
And the streets run red with buses and blood from the fights that break out between friends
In a sea of eyes that look but never smile we're heading home
So we can all be alone

The song flows like a tube ride with each station stop a lull as another instrument, another recollection is introduced. Secret thoughts and hopes bounce along, propelled by her distinctive voice, acoustic guitars and cardboard box drums. Somewhere in the middle a synth appears. There are lots of "bop ba da"s to sing along to. I love songs about London but I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone manage to describe the aching loneliness that you can feel living there until I heard this.
Peter Wyeth

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[Album: Dirty Birds]