Slate – The Grandfather Clock

Jack Shephard says “The Grandfather Clock” is about not taking unconditional love for granted, but the lyric goes further, into guilt. The narrator finally makes the trip he’s put off for years, back into a dead grandfather’s house. What comes pouring out with the memories is the knowledge that he was the one meant to carry the family’s story and let it slip. Too busy chasing an ambition he now sees as something that fed on him while he kept his eyes covered. Sunday dinners laid like clockwork, the hardest words never said to the people who needed them, a garden going to ruin and a grand house turning to dust: the clock above it all keeps time on a love that was given for nothing and spent carelessly, fading now along with everything around it.

Lauren Edwards’ bassline and Raychi Bryant’s drums carry it, harmonies wind around Shephard’s voice, and the whole thing gathers like a storm before breaking into noise. Recorded live at RAK and Perryvale with Richie Kennedy, it’s the title track of the Welsh quartet’s second EP, out January 22, 2027 on Brace Yourself Records.