School Of Seven Bells – SVIIB to their mates – have had a place in my heart from the start, but it’s not always been firmly fixed. It seemed so sweet when twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza met up with Benjamin Curtis while opening on tour for Ben’s band Secret Machines, and the three of them started this somehow perfect band, SVIIB, which I followed like a devoted spaniel. Then Claudia left around 2010, and I found that hard to cope with. I’d seen them a fair few times by then, and it seemed like Claudia’s input had gotten smaller but I never knew whether it was by her choice. I expect in reality she just got tired of being the third wheel and decided to give Ben and Alley more space. It took me so long to forgive them, but in the end, I put it all behind me, and a chance to see them was 95% of the reason for me going to a festival full of awful yummy mummies and posh daddies and their bawling offspring back in 2012, which is where I took the photo. I crouched on the ground in the too narrow photopit until security pointed out I’d had way more than my three to shoot. My love affair with them was rekindled, and I was as devastated as anyone when we had that awful news that Benjamin had been diagnosed with an agressive form of lymphoma. He was almost immediately hospitalized, and bless them, they (mainly Alley) kept us all updated. There was talk of this or that treatment, but in the end Ben just simply died in the end days of 2013, and that was starkly that.
Except that while he was in hospital he and Alley kept writing and recording. Nobody knew quite how much, or what, and memory fades I guess.
And here we are nearly two years later, and wow, it was true. They did enough for Alley to turn what they achieved into a whole album’s worth. I truly don’t want to be saccahrine and mawkish, so please treat the song on its own merits. I think it’s utterly beautiful, up there with their best, and I can’t wait for the album. See what you make of it…
Official Site – http://www.sviib.com/
