There’s nothing Minimum about Blondes’ new indie banger Minimum Wage and its Music Video.

There’s a buzz about Nottingham indie up and comers Blondes at the moment, and for very

good reason. After the worldwide success of their track Coming of Age, thanks in large part to lockdown and TikTok as well as it’s brilliance of course, they’re back with another fantastic

tune. Minimum Wage was released at the beginning of May and the band have recently

dropped a music video to accompany the song.

Minimum Wage explores the bittersweet feeling of growing older and the band laments the

drab day-to-day life that comes with it, having to work all day or all night and not having any

time to just ‘lay around’. The chorus is uplifting and punchy though to contrast this feeling of

boredom, Blondes are far from boring. The whole track feels very summer and festival-ready,

with the band set to play Live at Leeds festival in October. The pre-chorus is prime for a sing-

along, and the opening line of ‘The kids are getting older, I don’t know if I wanna go home

today’ is sure to be belted straight back at the band at every show they play.

The track itself shows Blondes are not at all afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves. The track feels almost like an unreleased track from The Cure, the lyrics and delivery have that signature melancholic feeling to them, and the guitars are fuzzy in that iconic style and the melody is intoxicating. But, as a fan of The Cure, if I found out that they had kept a tune like this on the backburner, I would be both amazed and horrified.

Even on the video, the inspirations are clear for all who watch. Guitarist and songwriter Alex

Davison says they tried to reference ‘Stop Making Sense, Wes Anderson and Mary Poppins.

There’s also a nod in there to Andy Warhol’s Factory.’ The video, directed by Dom Foster in

collaboration with James Slater (who directed the video for Coming of Age), is extremely playful and fun, with the band dressed as workmen, pulling different props from a small cardboard box to build their own set in the first half. It then transitions into the band dressed in suits, performing the song themselves. It cleverly allegorises the message of the song and illustrates the plight of an indie band when starting out, having to build themselves up and put in all of their own groundwork before having a stage to perform on.

The video ends with the band climbing into the cardboard box that they pulled their props

from, however, with Minimum Wage, Blondes are doing anything but putting themselves in a

box.

Article By Matt Codd