Jordan Pedersen wishes the internet would shut up about bacon.
For my money, there are few generic trappings more appealing than dream pop. Call it bourgeois exploitation if you like, but cloak something in enough fuzz and echo, and I’m usually sold. It’s music game wrapping stuff in bacon. Well I guess good songs help, too. And some effort to make the form your own, typically via some judicious genre-blending. Frankie Rose did it masterfully on last year’s Interstellar, perking her fuzz up with a bump of uncut garage rock. Works the other way around, too: Deftones would be just another bunch of sludgy neckbeards if it weren’t for the codeine stumble of their best material.
Warpaint have always split the difference between dream pop and icy post-punk, but the admixture is starker on their newest single, “Love is to Die,” their first new music since 2010’s still-great The Fool. Apparently they spent the intervening four years fortifying their bonafides on the latter, because the post-punk influences on this thing smack you in the face from the opening seconds, especially the crisper, more insistent drums and the roiling Peter Hook bassline.
In short, new producer Mark “Flood” Ellis (U2, PJ Harvey, New Order) makes his presence felt immediately. His MO seems to be upgrading Warpaint from little g to big G Grandiosity: where the best tracks on The Fool were bedroom epic, “Love is to Die” feels almost arena-ready.
Thankfully, their association with brit rock royalty hasn’t made them lose sight of what made them so good in the first place: their signature propulsive guitar chug, evinced by the impossibly titanic third minute of “Undertow” (running/running/running from the troubles). It takes “Love is to Die” an extra minute to reach that kind of groove, but that’s not a knock: it’s a sign that Warpaint has enough great musical ideas that they don’t have to lead with an old standard. This is a level of confidence all bands should aspire to.
Their self-titled sophomore album – sporting a sexy Chris Cunningham-shot cover – is out January 17th.
