WL//WH Premiere: WORM SCHOOL Climbs “Jacob’s Ladder” (Music Video)

WL//WH Premiere WORM SCHOOL

Following two years of honing their live sound playing in and around Manchester with the likes of TTSSFU, Bedroom Vacation & Thistle, Worm School are releasing their fragile and atmospheric debut single “Jacob’s Ladder” through cult label Crafting Room Recordings, graced by the spacious and dreamy production from Shoegaze royalties such as Ben Easton (Deary) and Dom Freeman, and mastered by Simon Scott (Slowdive), whose DIY Music Video by the band member Will Davis themself, WL//WH is thrilled to premiere.

Unearthed at the tail end of 2022, the four-piece, made of Will Davis (drums, vox), Dan Beach (guitar, vox), Jordan McGuffie (bass) and Liv Du Val (synth, vox), writhe between melodic, ghostly dream pop and reverb-drenched walls of sound, swirling guitar and sparkling synth lines.

The idea was that the words are being whispered to you by a mindfulness app, with a kind of predatory sympathy. Like most of our songs, the lyrics evolved gradually after mumbling some random phrases into the mic and feeling our way through it. The song originally had two verses – the second verse’s lyrics were written the day before we went into the recording studio – but we edited it down after agreeing that the world might not be ready for nine minutes’ worth of Worm School heaven, just yet…Worm School say

Pulling its title from Liv’s Cornish roots, named after an infamous flight of stairs in Falmouth, “Jacob’s Ladder” unfurls poignant, intimate, and solemn vocal intertwining that may recall early Mojave 3, to build a striking oneiric and gloomy aura amid melancholic sweetness and deep, perpetual yearning.

Reflective, expansive and moving, the song orchestrates twinkling, introspective plucked guitar strings to blurrily ripple and echo over melancholic bass pulses whilst soft, vulnerable, heartfelt male vocals gloomily ache until beautiful celestial female skies radiate cool comfort from above, to slowly uplift and merge manly hums into a stirring unison. Halfway through, stumbling drum beats usher in increasingly vibrant, resonating wistful melodies that heighten into the ether before turning to a low strident whimper, wrapped in sad, fearful feminine abandonment.

The slow delay on the main guitar line felt like a kind of stairway into something beyond. The whole song came together quickly, and pretty soon became a favourite to play live. We think the name ties together the different parts of the Worm School sound – soft and fragile, but also epic and atmospheric.

The companion video for Jacob’s Ladder begins as the sun shines bright through the treetops outside of a house window, causing leaves to glisten, shadows to flux and delicate white blossoms to turn pink. Then, blurry, deep-hued filters melt over the imagery, and the focus shifts to a pair of legs running down an old beaten path. The vision turns red when the soundtrack changes midway and an explosion of psychedelia takes hold over a live performance. Finally, a blue ephemeral square cools things down into a yellow flower bed where tiny candid photographs of the band and their pets appear.

The single “Jacob’s Ladder” by Worm School is due October 24th via Crafting Room Recordings.

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