The alternative/angular/abstract "they're HOW fucking young?!" wunderkids are back with a new album this spring and hooooooo I'm excited.
Here's the first single and accompanying video for
John L, directed by Nina McNeely whose acclaimed choreography work includes Gaspar Noe's recent film "Climax". The tune's fucking great. I wasn't too sure of it at first but it builds and expands to great effect and I was quite enraptured by the whole thing by the end of it. Once again the band have managed to create something bold and dynamic with a wide range of influence. I'm hearing a lot of stuff in here - post-punk vibes of Protomartyr, Talking Heads, fused with mind-bending jazz-prog styles of stuff like King Crimson or even Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. They're really quite tremendous as a live act too and I can imagine this tune will absolutely spank once they can take to the stage again.
Sadly their guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin doesn't feature on the album as he's on indefinite leave due to mental health. They've recruited a sax player (who features heavily on the above track) and keyboardist for this one.
I'd been revisiting "Schlagenheim" last week before knowing this new album was due out, as I was concerned it might have been a flash in the pan and not as cohesive and brilliant as I'd felt it was back in 2019 (bad short term memory and issues with getting over-excited about things means that I do this a lot), but nope, it's still fucking excellent.
