"Like I Say (I runaway)" is the sort of song that one thinks they've might have heard a million times, when in fact they've never heard it at all, in the same way that genius feels obvious in hindsight.
With its stark, damning lyrical accusations and an arrestingly erratic groove - not to mention it's stunner of an act three twist - "Conceited" is a stormy portrait of a toxic love affair painted upon the canvas of its off-kilter and cleverly turbulent arrangement. It's also a brief and striking distillation of everything that makes its parent album - and Young's music in general - so compelling.
"I Like It I Like It" is a soulful, almost sinister little helping of R&B, built on a roiling, slinky beat and a positively seductive bassline and topped with luscious, chime-like keys, plus the occasional clarion-call synth. Both singers join in reverb-drenched harmony throughout, splitting the song's two primary verses between them before ending once more in perfect tandem.
... OB's exultations are put forward with an delicacy found in the most effervescent indie pop. The end result feels at once relaxed and celebratory: a perfect portmanteau of Afrobeat jubilation and Indie contemplation.
..."Unraveling," feels like a both a culmination and an evolution of all these past iterations of Muse, merging the synthwave ventures of their later years with the guitar-driven heaviness of their earlier repertoire.
Fuzzed-out guitar licks drip over a strutting, lascivious beat while Kane channels Marc Bolan's sultry croon in an ode on a botanically-dubbed lover, all wrapped up in a warm layer of saturation that recalls both retro recordings, and the scores of present-day tracks made to invoke that same analog aura.
"Emergence," like its creators, is difficult to sum up in simple terms.
Like the desert locales it conjures, which secretly teem with life beneath a vast canopy of sky, "RATHER BE ALONE" makes so much out of so little.
... "Animaru" contains multitudes, being on the one hand as unpredictable and wild as its namesake would imply, and on another a carefully sonic opus.
Sounding something like "Moaning Lisa Smile" by way of Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Bloom Baby Bloom" delivers ferocity and reflection in equal measure.
“A seismic steppers cut that detonates inside the echo chamber — bass you feel in your lungs before your ears catch it, tape delays like slow-moving electrical storms. SSLy Scout pushes Bristol’s dub tradition forward with authority and grace.” — RumorControl (9.1)
"Loser" has something of a western feel to it under the hood, characterized by a steady, almost statically insistent groove and punctuated with deliberate rhythmic strikes a la Parker's recent hit "Borderline."