Track of the Week: Ghum - California

Track of the Week: Ghum – California

The cosmopolitan and multinational band Ghum return with a brand new single ‘ California’ on Everything Sucks Music. The follow up to last years breakthrough single ‘Saturn’ this time around the band, made up of vocalist Laura Guerrero Lora from Spain, bassist Marina MJ from Brazil and guitarist & vocalist Jojo Khor and drummer Vicki Butler from London, take the U.S state as the promised land, where dreams can come true.

When we first started writing it, jamming at rehearsals, California kept popping into my head and I started singing it as a chorus. I’ve never been there but I see it as a very idealistic place, somewhere to run away and start from zero. A hope for a good ending or a new beginning.”

It begins in Lora’s native Spanish over post punk reverb heavy guitar, it bursts into life with an infectious repetitive riff throughout. It skirts around the 90’s west coast grunge of Hole, the refrain in the chorus is very evocative of Courtney Love, however the guitars flirt between eerie 80’s new wave and the harsher rawer destorted sound a decade later.

Altogether this creates an atmosphere of escapism and detachment from the real world which is increasingly desirable.

See GHUM on tour in 2020:

30 Jan | Elektrowerkz, London

5 Mar | 6 Music Festival, London

28 Mar | Ritual Union, Bristol

25 Apr | Are You Listening? Festival, Reading

3 May | Stag & Dagger, Glasgow

6 Aug | Haldern Pop, Rees-Haldern, DE

7 Aug | CanelaParty, Malaga, ES

California is out now

God is in the TV is an online music and culture fanzine founded in Cardiff by the editor Bill Cummings in 2003. GIITTV Bill has developed the site with the aid of a team of sub-editors and writers from across Britain, covering a wide range of music from unsigned and independent artists to major releases.