Kindness – House

“What I like is maybe 5% of the output that pours over this country like the oceans from both coasts, and it’s mostly trash, but that good 5% is so exciting and so vital, and, may I say, so significant that it claims the attention of every thinking person”, Adam Bainbridge says to camera in his latest video about pop music.

The irony, of course, is that Kindness is not an easy pop star – his calm, thoughtful voice and long blazer are those of PhD art history student. In many ways he is more of an enthusiastic custodian-practitioner of pop than its most fervently modernist or hedonistic performer, as his intoning about the music of “the kids” suggests.

Yet his excellent album ‘World You Need A Change Of Mind’s is not an academic exercise. It’s a shot across the bow for sincere, fun, odd pop music, the best case made for the form this year, and House is its most personal moment, a wonderful song about love, loneliness and selflessness. He’s being sincere about pop music because it’s important, and he means every word he sings in that extraordinary voice. We all have a lot to learn.