25 Tracks from 2018

These aren’t in any particular order. These are just 25 of my favourite tracks from 2018. Click the song titles to listen.

Geyser – Mitski

This is how you open an album. Louder for the back. This is how you open an album.

Organ notes. Self-conscious seriousness. Mitski’s drones delicately over the top. Hopeless devastation. That weird static buzz that sounds a little bit like something from Twin Peaks: The Returned. In fact this whole record sounds like something from Twin Peaks. Mitski should have played the Bang Bang Bar. To me, so much of this album lingers in the same landscape as Lynch, grafting together received tropes and hyper-specific idiosyncrasy, cowboy men, pretty friends and The Blue Diner, dreamy textures lurching from darkness to soft light.

And then she sings that chorus line, rising effortlessly up alongside the guitar line, the drums thrashing away beneath her. And that mad organ still ploughing away, giving the whole thing a faux seriousness, a brilliant sing-song quality, rooting the words into an almost fairy-tale like space. Mitski becomes iconic within seconds. Mitski becomes a model for all our sadness and rage. Mitski sucks all the angry sadness into herself so that we can exorcise our own pain through her.

Is It Cold In the Water? – SOPHIE

Okay. So this was hard. There were so many tracks that I wanted to choose from this album. Obviously Immaterial is the best pop track of the year. If you don’t think so then get in the bin. But also It’s Okay To Cry was the first track dropped from the record, and was the first time SOPHIE showed her face and sang to us. Both of those were real statements of intent for where SOPHIE’s music is going, and were really heartbreakingly powerful in their own way.

But.

This track. Is just. Something else. It just ticks all my boxes. Thick, atmospheric loops that build and build and swallow you entirely. The vocals are so pure they slip like ice through the heaving, breathing, rippling soundscape underneath. The sound-craft here, the way she sculpts plastic worlds out of hyperreal tectonic plates, creating this plastic topography that glistens with its commodity-fetishism and yet is simultaneously utterly authentic. Totally real. Completely emotional. SOPHIE utilises the aesthetics of consumerism to craft new avenues of artistry, avenues of authentic self-expression that subvert the bland ideology of pop music to find real joy, real desire, real hope in the malleable, digital landscapes of today.

Quorum – Low

This album. This album. Double Negative is my favourite album of the year. I think I want to write something longer about it once I have more headspace to really articulate what it is these tracks do to me. This will have to do for now.

Quorum is a summoning. It sounds like digital ghosts rising out of screens beneath a thick mist of despairing information overload. It sounds like crushed hope. And it builds and builds and builds and then it pulls back and there are just their voices and they sound so fragile and alone and eager and sad and then the tide comes back and crashes against them like waves and knocks them out completely. And you can hear them trying to come back, trying to break the surface of the waves, trying to make themselves heard. But the noise is too much. It overwhelms them and us. Beautiful, agonising despair.

BJ Burton needs to work his magic with more artists. First Bon Iver and now Low. Seriously, just take anyone and do this to them and I am pretty sure I will love it. The sound-craft on this album, the imagination burning the engine of this sonic palette is completely breath-taking. Let’s just get every artist to make a BJ Burton album. Even fucking Troye Sivan. Imagine his little face getting ripped apart by wild, distorted static. I am here for it.

1999 – Charlie XCX and Troye Sivan

Obviously this track slams. Obviously. I don’t really need to prove that to you, just listen to it.

I’ll tell you what’s cool about this track though, for me anyway. Charlie XCX became one of my favourite artists when she started working with SOPHIE and the PC Music brigade. The Vroom Vroom EP was one of my favourite things of that year. But before that, I didn’t really care for her music. In fact I’ll be really honest, I really hated it. I’m not saying it was bad. Objectivity is a lie. I’m just saying I didn’t like it.

So what’s cool about this track is that it shows Charlie XCX can still make bangers without the support of the PC Music group. The production and concept isn’t in the same hyperreal landscape that Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 are in. This is more of a standard house-pop affair. But it still slams. Because the production is great but also because Charlie’s personality shines through as someone living for serious fun, who doesn’t take herself too seriously and yet who challenges you not to fucking love the music.

For the record, I don’t massively want to go back to 1999 because that was the year I first got stung by a wasp and developed a phobia. But hey. If you want to do 1998 I’ll be there.

Pynk – Janelle Monae

I have such a mood associated with this track. With all of the tracks Monae dropped in the build-up to Dirty Computer actually. It was a hopeful mood. It was a mood of looking up at an artist at the top of their game who was making profoundly political work that celebrated rather than lamented. Listening to this track made me feel like change was possible.

There is something deeply caring about the musicality of this track. It’s in the softly bubbling synth-line. It’s in the gentle guitar chords in the back, breaking out in song to support Monae’s voice at the chorus. It’s in the almost-whispered tenderness of Monae’s verse-lines. Queerness is caring. That’s a very general statement obviously. And I know queer people who aren’t very caring at all. But Monae’s vision of queerness is one of genuine care for each other, evinced in the music we’re gifted here. And it’s something to be treasured and fired up about. When the chorus bursts through your ears you can’t help but smile: the zig-zagging guitar lines, the layered vocal textures, the clicking fingers. It’s just beautiful.

Ice Cream (Chapter VIII) – Leon Vynehall

I’ve written about this track on another essay on this blog. This whole album is stunning. But this track is the centre-piece for me. I don’t think I’ve heard anything like it before. It sounds like time. That’s what is so crazy about it. He’s created a track that sounds like time and history and nostalgia and loss and memory. Have a listen. Read the essay on the blog if you like.

In My View – Young Fathers

Young Fathers will always hold a very special place in my heart. This band have been there for me when I’ve been really down. Their music does this magic thing of combining dark, moody hip-hop sounds with aching, yearning vocal roars. Their music will have you stamping your feet on the floor and shaking your head one minute, before weeping and calling your best friend at half two in the morning the next. This is the real shit.

I saw them live this year as well. And you know what’s great about them? Is that when you see them perform onstage you realise how… sort of… queer they are? Like it wasn’t something I associated with their music when I listened to the albums, but when they perform there is lots of homo-erotic energy up there between them, and it adds this whole amazing dimension to the music, this sort of masculine pride, positive in its queer sexuality.

I think in my head this was going to be the track that thrust Young Fathers into the mainstream. It’s got their trademark slightly-off-key-and-kilter synth lines running through, as well as the spoken-word whispers of poetic madness into your ear, but it combines them with the catchiest hook you’ll hear from the band. It is the best statement of Young Father’s ability to make music that is authentically inspirational without caving to bland pop ideas of what we should aspire for.

Also the music video is just great. Really smart. I won’t give it away. Just check it out.

5 Dollars – Christine and the Queens

Oh god. Christine. When I am resurrected in the after-life and I get to request a new form from the God Almighty, I will ask her to re-appear as Christine and the Queens. I don’t even need to be as cool as she is. Just a bit. Just a fraction of her essence as mine. That’s all I’ll ask for.

It’s difficult for me to detach this track from its video, because that’s how I first encountered it. Which is completely fine. Because the music video is one of my favourite of the year. Watching that video gives me the same feelings I got when watching the older kids at school. A sort of hopeless and distraught admiration. How can someone be that comfortable in their skin? How can someone have such control over their body? There’s a moment where she looks into the mirror and makes this gesture with her fingers towards her own reflection. And fuck me, it SHOULD be lame. Do you know how many times I’ve done that to my own reflection? It’s awful. But Christine makes it cool! More than cool! Essential! Iconic!

Her voice melts over the production. But it doesn’t just sink into the bass and piano stabs. It soars out over them at the chorus. There’s a yearning in the track, there’s a wild celebration of the human voice, a spontaneous joy in the power of desire. That’s what makes the track so vital, such a hub of energy in my memories of this year. Christine isn’t just cool, she’s passionate and earnest and excited by herself and what she will do. She makes me want to look forward to the future.

High to Death – Car Seat Headrest

Somewhere on this album Will Toledo tells us that he wishes he had Frank Ocean’s voice. This track makes me wish I had Will Toledo’s voice. I don’t know how he makes his timbre sound like it’s dragging over rocks. I don’t know how he can have such quiet heat burning behind his words, before switching to aching, agonising fragility. It’s so sexy. It’s so emotional and so effortless. It sounds like the music is coming just as naturally as he breathes down the microphone. If Will gets Frank Ocean’s voice I want first dibs on his.

I listened to this track a lot whilst I was staying in various cities on my own, performing in half-empty theatres. It feels like the end of something. But it feels like the sort of ending where you celebrate everything that came before, rather than lamenting that it’s over.

Listen to his repeated refrain ‘I don’t wanna die /  I don’t wanna die’ and try not to feel like you’re sitting in a car at night, all your bags packed in the trunk. Your lover is sitting next to you and they turn their head expectantly and you turn the key in the ignition and turn to them and say, ‘So what’s it gonna be?’ and then they just nod and you slam your foot down on the accelerator and drive away into the night.

Yeah. Pretty cool right?

San Marcos – BROCKHAMPTON

BROCKHAMPTON were my favourite artist of last year. The Saturation trilogy was such a revelation. Here was a group of radical, queer, young men living together in a house, making music without a label and releasing it independently. And the music they were making sounded new. Like, really new. Romil’s production was so wild on each track, and the flows and words of the main performers had all the fire and violence of Odd Future’s early releases, but with the problematic rape lyrics replaced by woke comments on queerness within hip hop and rape culture in the US.

And I liked iridescence. I did like it. But I didn’t love it. It felt too much to me like they were sinking into well-worn patterns. It felt like they let bearface lead a boyband-esque chorus too many times, like they allowed the wild and weird production techniques to dominate the landscape a little too much, so that the idiosyncrasies of the various members were dulled. It didn’t feel like a step forward. But hey, why the fuck should they be constantly trying to make steps forward. Maybe they just want to do their thing. I’m not the boss of them.

And San Marcos is beautiful. It’s really really beautiful and it’s also a really clear statement of what makes this band so special. The trickling guitars that have one foot in boyband culture. The voice-altered lines from Kevin and Joba that ooze pain and loss and hope and sensuality. And then that children-choir-chorus. It’s just so earnest. There is so much faith in the power of human community, of human connection, the connection between these boys and between all people. It’s that earnestness which makes BROCKHAMPTON so great, and such a joy to listen to.

Feel the Love – KIDS SEE GHOSTS

Kanye West has had a difficult year. His foray into politics managed to be both problematic and pitiful at the same time, as fans and critics alike simultaneously derided his allegiance to Trump and felt sorry for his clear mental health problems. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with him. My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy struck a bad chord with me. Even though I know it’s meant to be one of the best albums of all time. I never really felt like there was any irony in how he presented himself, in that self-aggrandising, misogynistic vision of his own genius.

But it’s complicated, obviously. I’m a white man. I have been allowed such an implicit level of privilege throughout my life that I have no awareness of the height of my unearned platform. When I hear people self-aggrandising it makes me uncomfortable, but there are people who weren’t born with privilege, who self-aggrandise out of pride, out of a need to be heard, out of a need to make space. Black self-aggrandisement is a radical act, and one that I and all other white men will never get to understand and never should understand.

I don’t know how the misogyny fits into that. Badly, I would imagine. That’s why I really couldn’t get on with Ye, the other album West released this year. For all the production magic that Kanye invariably works, the lyrics throughout stunk too much of patriarchal violence excused by mental health. Which is just shitty whichever way you look at it.

But regardless of all this, and regardless of the fact that I didn’t really get the rest of this album, I can’t help but love this track. It does what Kanye does best: slick, deeply creative production that maximises the vocal qualities of the rappers on the beat, and a hook that is SO wild that the first time you hear it you genuinely feel like you’ve never heard anything like it before. Seriously. It’s like he’s scat-singing with a hammer. It makes your whole body shake. There’s that distorted drum-beat underneath, crackling with static. The track feels like a thrill-ride. It leaves you completely breathless, like you’ve just survived an earthquake. If only the rest of the album had done that to me. Alas. No.

SUMO – Denzel Curry

The first time I encountered Denzel Curry was on the 2016 XXL Freshmen Cypher. He was paired with Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Lil Yachty and Kodak Black. The whole thing is fun: Uzi and Yachty are really good at making the room feel like a shared space inhabited by cool people. It’s just that they do that when they’re not rapping. They do it with their adlibs when 21 Savage is rapping. When they’re rapping it sort of feels…

A bit rubbish.

So it wasn’t really hard for Curry to stand out from the pack there. His bars were hard and punchy and interesting. And Yachty’s um… weren’t.

And then this album came out. And suddenly everyone realised that this Soundcloud Rap phenomenon had birthed something really magic. Curry takes the gritty trap beats of that genre, the heavy reliance on hooks and repeated refrains, and turns it into a really neat artistic statement. So many of the tracks on this album pop, but SUMO is the one for me because when I heard it I just exploded out my chair. This track makes you want to move. I’m sure all the cool people who live on my street were very embarrassed at the site of a skinny white guy skanking to this bassline. But I don’t care. SUMO reminds me that violent music can be liberating, and has a real function in terms of fucking exorcising something from your body.

Put it on. Try not to bop your head. Go on. I dare you.

Hot Pink – Let’s Eat Grandma

So, a funny story about Let’s Eat Grandma. Is that they were playing at the opening of a new club in Manchester that I happened to be at. And I was super excited. Because I had really loved their first album and I had absolutely LOVED that super weird performance they did on Jools Holland where they were like hyper-serious goth queens. So I was pumped.

And they came onstage and they started to set up. And they had loads of kit. But they had only been given an hour set before someone else was meant to play. And none of their tech was working. And everyone was watching them try and get their headsets and keyboards to work. And they just kept looking at the tech guy and shaking their heads. And we just watched.

For forty-five minutes.

It was sort of agonising. Watching really great artists continually defeated by the failings of an earpiece. But anyway, they got it working after forty-five minutes and they played two tracks and it was great. But they didn’t get to play Hot Pink.

That story wasn’t that funny it turns out.

Hot Pink was one of the first tracks to drop from this new album. And yes, it’s a great track partially because it’s produced by SOPHIE and it has that rumbling, plastic bassline that crushes you from above and feels like some sort of hyper-digital wrecking ball smashing through the scene. But it’s also great because it utilises Let’s Eat Grandma’s idiosyncratic vocal qualities to stand in tension with SOPHIE’s production, to draw out an empowered female violence that retains its femininity whilst simultaneously evincing raw, devastating strength. I think these girls might be the future. So you know. Get with the programme, duh.

Know You – Against All Logic

You know what’s great? When an artist that you love, but who has previously made quite serious music, music that you have to really listen to, comes through with a record of just straight fun. Nicolas Jaar might be working under a pseudonym here, but you can still tell it’s him. There’s a delightful weirdness to this track, to all of the tracks on the record. The way he distorts the voice just slightly, layering it with another and bouncing it down against the beat like a rubber-band ball. The way the funky bass-line blares a little too loudly, like a nerdy teenager screaming a joke he’s been preparing all night in the face of other party-guests.

But what’s great is it just shows how fucking good at making music Jaar is. He just knows how to make you dance. That’s what so great about this track. It doesn’t ask anything else of you than to sink into it with a smile. Listen to it all the way through, I guarantee at least four moments of head-bop bliss.

Go To Town – Doja Cat

Oh man. Doja Cat. My first experience with Cat was that Moo video that she made this year. And I thought it was kind of cool. But I found it difficult to discern because I think I also just really fancied her. I think that song is great. But she did also admit she made it in one night, along with the video. So who knows.

But what makes Doja Cat great is that she knows everyone is going to fancy her. You only have to watch one of her videos to immediately realise that she has second-guessed your attraction and has made it part of her artistry. And by doing that she robs that attraction of its potential objectifying dimension. She styles herself in such a way that the sexuality between listener and artist is in the hands of the artist. And so the music is sexual. But it’s sexual not in a gross way but in a wow-isn’t-sex-fun way.

So when I found Go To Town I was just so happy. Because this song fucking slaps. Cat’s voice oozes over this thick, crushing bassline that gets into your bones and makes you move. The lyrics revel in female sexuality. Doja Cat makes celebrating female sexuality feel like the most normal thing in the world. Doja Cat makes us realise to celebrate female sexuality is to celebrate all sexuality in a wonderful, caring and joyful way, without problematic power dynamics and unwanted, masculine, selfish dominance.

Flight 22 – Kali Uchis

This was the coolest album of the year. Don’t even try and deny it. Kali Uchis emerged from the smoke oozing you-are-fucking-lucky-I-even-showed-up energy with a gaze that said, ‘You’ve got ten seconds to impress me’ and BOY did I want to impress her. That video she made with Tyler, the Creator? Watched it many times. The Colours Show live recording she did? Watched it many times. Performing Tyrant on Jools Holland? Many, many times.

There is so much personality in Uchis’ voice. You hear her soul in every word. Listen to the way she curls over words like ‘know’ and ‘you’. She makes those words sound like quiet howls, like she’s investing each one with life of its own and letting it run riot through her mouth. She sings about total devotion to some fortunate lover. The production around the track drenches it in sepia-nostalgia, 80s Miami haze. The mood is of joyful abandoned hope. The complicated region of human interaction that is the celebration of a love that no longer exists.

The track is a great summation of what Uchis achieved so amazingly on Isolation: investing inherited musical ideas with brand new personality, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

Nervous Tics – Maribou State

I’ve written about this track, and the whole album, in a review on this blog. You can go and read it there if you want. This track was such a warm campfire in this year. Maribou State doing exactly what they do best.

Cost Your Love – Miya Folick

Before we get into this track, we need to talk about the fact that Miya Folick absolutely wins the prize for best album cover of the year. Look at that. Look how fucking funny it is. Look at her face. Look at the way her parents are trying to cram into the picture. It sort of stops being funny for a moment because I start thinking about my parents and them taking pictures of us to remember our family by because they’re getting older. But then I see how unimpressed Miya is. And it’s funny again.

Cost Your Love is made mostly because it showcases just how exciting Folick’s voice is. The control she has over those slides, the way she slips from beefy bass notes to trembling falsettos, is just magic. It means that the track simultaneously punches you in the stomach before cradling you gently, delicately weaving you through the stripped-back, minimal production. Most of the work here is Folick’s voice actually. There’s that sexy, twanging guitar lead at the top end of the track, and there’s touches of piano and plucked violins that accentuate the contours of her voice, but the main power is Folick herself.

The rest of the album is great too by the way. The opening track, Thingamajig is a real gambit because it’s such a slow-burner to have as an opener. But it’s beautiful. Check it out.

Clairvoyant – Nakhane

When Nakhane sings the word ‘gladiatorial’ in the opening bars of this song it sends shivers down my spine. This track literally glimmers. From the twinkling keys deep in the production, to the electric guitar line tearing through the space between his voice, everything sparkles with sensual, sexual light. And Nakhane himself is just… sort of heavenly. Listen to what he can do with his voice! Listen to those rumbling bass notes in the opening verse! The shift into the falsetto trills! The way he curls himself into the space!

I don’t think you get the full effect of Nakhane until you watch him performing live. Go and watch the footage of him on Jools Holland. First of all, just take stock of that outfit. The shoes. The trousers. The turtleneck. Then watch how he literally can’t stop the music shifting into his body. And finally, finally, wait for the moment when the rest of the band join him for that wordless vocal crescendo. If you’re not dancing then you’re a war criminal.

A Place – Nils Frahm

I think I discovered this year that I am actually quite bad with words. As in, I am quite bad at receiving words when they are delivered to me. I have it when I watch theatre and I have it when I listen to music. I am very bad at hearing and understanding lyrics.

Which is partially why I have been so drawn to albums like All Melody this year, which forego lyrics in favour of soundscapes and atmospheres. And boy does this track craft an atmosphere. It’s in those rippling synth chords first, shimmering over the nearly-absent beat, slowly filling the air like some sort of delicious gas. And it rises and rises and you feel sort of swamped by it. And then those vocal lines appear. Like silhouettes in the fog. It’s like a parade of spirits, like we’ve stumbled into some ritual in the middle of a forest and are watching nymphs and fauns calling up some nature-spirit from the ground. It’s the way those lines escalate up the arpeggios and twirl around each other, evincing that slightly-demonic power that well-constructed harmonies have.

It’s a magic track. I think I listened to it a lot because it conjures images. So it was useful when I was writing. It does that wonderful thing of giving you a lot but allowing for your own imagination to reach out and fill in the gaps. It sort of sits in the back of your mind and swallows you up so that you can just allow your mind to wander freely to wherever it wants to go. Give it a try. I reckon you’ll like it.

Years Gone By – Avantdale Bowling Club

If you are one of the three people that actually read this blog, then you might be aware that I am a sucker for artistic expressions of time, nostalgia or memory. Anyone singing or writing about time passing away, about the future turning to past, is guaranteed to have me as a fan. Which doesn’t even count the number of unfortunate artists who have me impose those ideas on their music which probably isn’t about that at all.

A very close friend sent this track to me over the Summer. We hadn’t actually spoken in a while. It was really nice. Particularly because this track feels like a slow-burning visit to shared memories. The jazzy instrumentals craft a hive of warmth, shadows of people from our past reflected on cave walls. His voice weaves through the notes, bounces over the piano keys and rattling, relentless drums. The track might be about the past but there’s excitement about the future here. There is a sense in which time is an eternal site of self-expression. The saxophone line breathes gently over the shared vocal beats. When the track closes I text him back.

Missing U – Robyn

She’s back! After eight years! What a year to choose her return! It’s like in all the gloomy haze of crypto-fascism that has become the norm for us, Robyn descended from her digital heaven to allow us a glimpse of what a future world can look like. Seriously. Robyn’s music takes technology and crafts it into angels. Listening to this track feels like talking to an android from the future, if androids had learnt to love and lived in socialist communes.

Bliss immediately. From the opening trills of twinkling synths. And Robyn’s voice shines just as brightly as the electric sounds. Robyn makes missing someone cool. She makes missing somebody seem like the most exciting thing in the world, because the absence points not towards the past, not towards the memories of before but towards the future regained, towards the excitement of filling that gap.

So when the chorus bursts into your eyes the melancholy of the lyrics is translated into this sort of celestial realm, this eschatological future-looking space of blissful hope, like cultists yearning after the end-times and the moment of meeting their God. It’s holy! It’s actually holy! 21^st century, digital communion. That’s what Robyn does.

My My My! – Troye Sivan

Troye Sivan is not my type of man. I think he is amazing. But on an aesthetic level, he doesn’t tick my boxes. But then again my boxes are almost exclusively burly old men. So you know. Not much in the pop department there.

But the first time I saw Troye Sivan’s face. My immediate thought was. Fuck me. There are going to be some people out there who will have a heart attack when they see you. I have never seen anyone who fulfils the term ‘boyish charm’ so explicitly, with such finesse, with such ease. The man is beautiful. He’s so beautiful I actually get sad when I think about him too long because I think about all the people sat on their own swiping through Tinder, getting no matches, and yearning after Troye Sivans.

Anyway. My My My! is a massive pop track. Troye’s voice swirls from aching croon to careering, rising arpeggio joy. He has such control over his vocal ability that at times it feels like there are two characters here: the sensual, sexual object of total desire first, and then the joyful, unabashed voice of celebration, of joy in just fucking living and being gay and loving yourself. Also, shout out to Oscar Gorres on production. He packs a lot in on this track. The Diplo-esque, high-pitched vocal trills at the chorus, the chunky, driving bassline underneath, the pitched-down vocal lines twirling around the glitching synth notes. It all brings out Troye Sivan’s essential modernity. So modern. So new. So fresh. So Pepsi.

High (ft. Elton John) – Young Thug

I really like Young Thug. I think I might actually fancy him a little bit. And I really like the fact that I can’t really understand what he’s saying. I’m sure loads of people can. I love how easily he makes his voice musical. He pulls off that sort of spectacular trick that mumble rap can do, which is being deeply cool, sort of tacky, yet simultaneously heartfelt and bursting. This shouldn’t work. Young Thug and Elton John. Thug’s words trip over the piano chords. Easy piano intervals. His auto-tuned croons twirl above them with John’s words. And it just works. It’s really moving. It makes me think about enjoying a single moment before it vanishes. It makes me think about how good it can be to just stop sometimes.

Also, if you haven’t seen the video to Thug’s track Wyclef Jean yet then I can’t recommend it enough. Massive scenes. Wild stuff.

Affection – Tirzah

It feels appropriate to end this post with this track. I think I could end anything with this track and I would feel happy.

It feels fake to try and capture the sentiment of this track in words. So much of what these two women express is contained in the simple repetition of a piano-note burst. So much of what they have found lives in the timbre of Tirzah’s voice, rather than the words. Which isn’t to say the words are affecting. When I listen to them, they are.

I’m just saying this track had me before the words began. I’m just saying listening to this track is like climbing into bed and lifting the sheets above your head and holding yourself close pretending someone else is there. I’m just saying that listening to this track is like running your hands across the back of someone else’s neck. I’m just saying this track is like seeing your own reflection in someone else’s eyes.

You don’t need much, it turns out, to make something stunning. You don’t need much at all.