Toothless - Palm’s Backside

Ed Nash’s first post-Bombay Bicycle Club steps painted him as something timid. Shying away behind twinkling electronics and a nighttime aesthetic, it couldn’t have been further from the explosions of sound and colour that made up Bombay’s departing work, ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’. On ‘Palm’s Backside’, though, he’s changing tact.

The third Toothless track to be let loose, it finds Nash’s Americana influences pushed to the fore - it’s that timeless songwriting style that marks Toothless out from the pack. A hushed re-telling of a love gone wrong, Ed lamenting that the object of his affection looks “happier than we ever were”, it’s breathless and intimate in a way Bombay’s latter-day bombast could never have harnessed.

Love letter extracts like “you know me like a palm’s backside” dance around those more sombre reflections, Ed’s pairing of his warm tones against those of Marika Hackman proving a masterstroke. “Monkey see, monkey do,” they might echo off each other, but ‘Palm’s Backside’ is the first evidence that, with Toothless, Ed Nash has truly found his own voice.