London based indie-pop duo Hobby Club premiere their debut single For Maurice, taken from their first EP Video Days released 8th March.
Beth Truscott and Joe Rose’s sound is as unique as their vision of the world – sharing an unusual eye condition they only discovered after meeting each other. Inspired by Arthur Russell, The Beach Boys and Kate Bush, the duo craft a lyrical domesticity that evokes harbours and mills towns, polyester and chip wrappers, bus tickets and slate grey skies.
For Maurice is Hobby Club’s anthem for leaving home, named after a local celebrity in Joe’s hometown Barrow, the “brash and absurd, yet sensitive and creative” Maurice G. Flitcroft, who “at all times was striving for something more than his humble origins would allow by studying art and literature and becoming the self-professed best at anything he put his mind to”.
The track becomes the duo’s rebellion of limited small-town life: “Like my own Dad,” Joe describes, “Maurice begrudgingly worked in the shipyard but never let the narrow opinions of others corrode his delusions of grandeur”. Subverting this tradition, Joe now uses an abandoned canteen in the shipyard to record the jangle-pop of Hobby Club, proving “that no matter how absurd your goal is, you can just tell yourself you’re the best and that everybody else is wrong”.
