Come Back To My Arms is a beautiful love song straight from the jazz clubs of old.
As you walk down the Nethergate in Dundee, you’ll find an alleyway between Scott’s Butchers and Trades House. An unassuming, regular alleyway complete with wheelie bins and stone walls decorated in graffiti, and halfway down, there’s a doorway with a single solitary light above it, no signage, just the light. As you step through the door and follow the stairs into the basement, you’ll find Draffen’s. Once dubbed “the secret bar”, although I suspect it is much better known these days, Draffen’s is a 1920s-style speakeasy. This, I feel, is an allegory for Come Back To My Arms, the latest single from The Black Denims or at the very least, the ideal venue to hear the song.
Their previous output has been in the Americana and Country categories, but the latest offering is a soft jazz track that Frasier and Miles Crane might listen to in a high-class establishment whilst sipping a fine cognac. A couplet of gentle jazz vocals sits atop a warm bed of trills from various instruments, including piano, nylon string guitar, mandolin, violin, double bass, guiro, and bossa nova drums. It’s sweet and soulful but complex and impressive throughout. The arrangement allows space for every flavour to shine while leaving space for the others.
I can imagine a montage in a romantic comedy where the two lead characters cycle a tandem through Manhattan, share a hotdog in Central Park, and hilariously end up with mustard on their noses, before slow dancing under the stars as the camera pans out over the city. If you’d told me this song is 100 years old, I’d not argue with you. It feels nostalgic and steeped in history.
