"Daylight", by The Pattern Forms.
The Pattern Forms is Jon Brooks, of The Advisory Circle (and one of the masterminds of the Ghost Box label), and two dudes from The Friendly Fires.
Ghost Box have made an art form out of burying personality under layers of what tends to be called "hauntology" but what breaks down as overdosing on British children's television shows of the sixties and seventies, "The Wicker Man", and old-school BBC public service announcements, and turning all of this (and more) into pieces of music. What they haven't done too much of is actual, honest to goodness songcraft. (There are fleeting glimpses of this across their two seven-inch-single series, but still largely obscured by the concept.)
(I am making this sound like negative criticism. Actually, it isn't. They do what they do consistently brilliantly.)
The Pattern Forms come to us still dressed up in inverted commas, but here it's the sound of mid-80s British music, in all of its high-production-values majesty. (Think Tears For Fears, Talk Talk, and any number of records the product of expensive studio time with Fairlights, and go on from there.) And, in "Daylight", they have come up with an honest to goodness pop song, with heart and soul, and complete with chorus that, if you were there the first time around, will bring literal tears to your eyes. You have been warned.
