Named after a Nick Lowe song, Born Fighters are London-based Luke Barham (who you will know from Stagecoach/as Uncle Luc) and Los Angeles native Peter Maffei. Although the friends live over 5,000 miles away from each other, their shared love of power pop inspired them to write ‘Little Green Tree’ during a meet-up while Luke was in California earlier this year. In fact, it was written, rehearsed and recorded in just three days!
Sitting somewhere between Conor Oberst’s solo material and early Oasis B-sides, the three-minute song finds Luke taking on the majority of the vocal duties and opening with a plea: ‘Little green tree grow, inside with no light you tried first what came as a blow turned out to be not as hazardous as I believed’ and going on to discuss a desperate animal (‘This one-eyed dog waits in the pound for a new lease of life. He’s going gray round the mouth but he won’t stop running until his owner’s coming’) and how things can so easily change (”Burn the papers, it wasn’t meant to be this time, we’re getting different neighbours, different homes but the same sky’) before settling with the defiant and optimistic shouts of: ‘I know you will grow’.
This is just the first taste of Born Fighters; more is promised as soon as Luke has the money for a flight back to LA later this year.
