After eight albums of rewriting the rules to dance music, it’s hard to believe !!! (“Chk chk chk” if you’re saying it out loud) are still full of original ideas. “We’ve always been pushing towards something stranger and weirder,” bandleader Nic Offer shared ahead of the release of Let It Be Blue, an album that inexplicably opens with an acoustic-guitar singer-songwriter ballad. (Well, it is explicable—but you’ll have to Google it, he tells us. Another scenario in which the alternate spelling “Chk chk chk” comes in handy.)
While the rest of the record is considerably easier to dance to, there are lyrical and instrumental left turns at every song break. The minimal, whispered (and gibberish cooed), bass-dominating “Panama Canal,” for example, gives way mid-album to a track that tests the boundaries of what constitutes a cover (or even an interpolation). There’s also a joyful, punk-by-way-of-Eno fuck-you to the grey skies of February. Because honestly? Fuck February. Bleak-ass month.
With the new record dropping today via Warp, Offer gave us a dizzying track-by-track breakdown opening with a slightly cagey answer to the question of the band’s “seriousness,” and concluding with an impromptu pop state of the union. Stream the record and read his words below.
1. “Normal People”
A lot we could say about such a simple song. The way we look at it is, all the “serious” singer-songwriters eventually make their “dance” record, so why can’t we do the reverse of that? We can be serious too. Take us seriously or don’t. We’ll get over it either way. And why did we choose to open the album with the serious one? I dunno, we explained why in other interviews. Google us. Good luck.
2. “A Little Bit (More)”
Ah, now here we have some serious dance music. But is it serious? What’s it about? It’s about dancing—something we take very seriously. I really like how this one comes in after the acoustic song, like *takes off jacket* “Let’s work.”
3. “Storm Around the World” (feat. Maria Uzor)
We had a couple versions of this song laying around, but we had sent it to Maria Uzor from Sink Ya Teeth, who we had toured with in the UK, and she sent back this hook that opened it up nicely.
4. “Un Puente” (feat. Angelica Garcia)
We made this one off a slowed down ghettotech beat, and since Rafael was already singing in Spanish it wasn’t too far off of an idea to cut up the vocals in the style of dembow artists like El Alfa. I thought we had a pretty good song going, but Rafael thought it would work better with a female vocalist on it, so I suggested Angelica Garcia. What she sent back was even better than we had hoped. Part of making good records is feeling like you have something good, and then still finding better stuff as you work on it.
5. “Here’s What I Need to Know”
You need a few breakup songs on your songwriting resumé, and the only thing better than a breakup song is a breakup anthem. And really, what doesn’t say “breakup anthem” better than a bunch of swirling, building arpeggios and ’90s trance stabs that crash into a big French house payoff?
6. “Panama Canal” (feat. Meah Pace)
We were writing many of the songs on this record by trading our Ableton sessions back and forth online. It was a new way for us to work on a record, and because of the state of the world, yada yada, we were forced to lean into new ways of working. Rafael wrote this off a groove that Mario put up.
7. “Man on the Moon” (feat. Meah Pace)
No, “Man on the Moon” isn’t necessarily my fave R.E.M. song either, but it’s a good one and it has a lot of stiff competition. Like a lot a lot. It kinda reminded me of those dancehall covers which are often only connected to the original version by some of the lyrics. As I was working on it I had started to think R.E.M. would like this version if they ever heard it, and indeed they did! They tweeted out their approval and it was one of those things that makes it all worth it.
8. “Let It Be Blue”
We had been calling this one “The Bowie Funk One” ’cause it was the taut type of funk he was doing during the Scary Monsters era, then we kinda added this crooner type of thing to it... Hmm, now that I think about it he actually croons a lot on Scary Monsters, so maybe we just Bowie-fied it more. Bowie-fy a song you love today.
9. “It’s Grey It’s Grey (It’s Grey)”
I’ve had this song title in my head for years called “Fuck You February, Fuck You Very Much,” and that’s basically what this is. It happened exactly like the song says: I pulled the blind back and it was grey, and the song just basically fell into my lap from there. Are we getting back to our punk roots on this one? Via, like, Here Come the Warm Jets or something. We purposely wanted there to be no drums so it sounded odder than regular punk.
10. “Crazy Talk”
I was messing with an SH-101 and came up with something I called “The Chris Isaak/Traveling Wilburys One.” Does it sound like either of them now? Well, no, not really. But that means we’ve done our job right! I like that the lyrics are romantic about regular friendship. It’s just about sitting up all night on the porch talking.
11. “This Is Pop 2”
Yes, inspired by XTC, of course, but also Kraftwerk and, I dunno, probably Jesus and Mary Chain or something. It was suggested that we Taylor Swift this up, but I dunno. I’m a fairly big Swiftie (to my friends I’m a very big Swiftie, but to a Swiftie I’m probably just, like, an ally or something), but I didn’t want the song to be like “wink wink we’re doing pop.”
In the XTC song, they say they’re pop, and, yeah, they’re a little strange, but you have to deal with it. Though it’s extremely catchy, it probably wasn’t the usual chart fodder of the time, but has lasted longer than other things on the charts from that time. I felt like we also had an original-sounding song and should just make it as fun as we could make it. I don’t think pop is dumb, and I don’t think you make good pop by dumbing it down. Some is, of course, but so is fucking some of everything. Pop is what you make it. Ask not what pop has done for you, but what you can do for pop.
