‘Melancholy’ is the first single from Augsburg, Germany’s the BV’s fourth album, Periphery, and it’s a hook-laden exercise in precise, melodic, guitar-driven indie-pop. Recording for close to a decade, they’ve used the time wisely- dedicating themselves to the immediacy and precision of their craft- this time within the new environs of a studio. It works a charm.
This is a song that’s so evocative of a specific place and time that it feels like a sonic capsule that delivers the listener to a world of wan-faced, sun-shy boys in national health spectacles singing sad songs to even sadder souls sat in their bed sits. But it’s neither full pastiche nor deliberately retro – coming as it does from a different place and time entirely – but more an exercise in diligent and loving veneration where the heart of the music beats boldly and brightly.
It’s often said that the most intriguing combinations happen when bands try to replicate the sounds they love and in doing so create something else entirely. This is more skilled and specific in its aims. The b.v’s hit their targets. But ‘Melancholy’ is still somehow both naive and artful in equal measure – offering jangling sensitivities and emotional potency whilst also remaining gossamer light in touch. It’s breezy but not entirely easy. It’s also clearly the work of a band who have worked hard to hone their touch and intertwine their psyches – the playing natural and joyful, despite the thematic titular darkness within.
There’s a refinement to the production too, where subtle synth lines add extra depth to those ear-worming melodies. In its insistent guitar tone and vocal lines, these old ears found things also vaguely reminiscent of The Vaccines’ melodic urgencies, albeit through a Morrisey/Marr jangling prism. The pleasing lo-fi hiss at the songs’ start makes the elegance of what follows all the more surprising, and, despite all of its echoes to songs and times past, its melodies ensure it remains very much in the present. Indeed, it does in its two and a half minutes – everything it needs to and bores into the brain in a most pleasingly resolute manner.
Periphery will be released with the collaborative aid of labels Kleine Untergrund Schallplatten, PaulaPaulPlatten and Shelflife Records and will be available both digitally and on vinyl on 27.11.2026; until then, let some melancholy into your lives.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
