It's been a joy to have Sorry back. Every single the British group have released in the past few months has been a bizarre surprise. Following Tony Basil-interpolating "Waxwing" and the Guided By Voices-sampling "Jetplane," their latest is the epic "Jive."
"Jive" is a slow-burning fever dream. It opens with a ping-ponging metronome and recorded chatter. That all falls away for a brief moment as Asha Lorenz closely sings about glum scenario: "If the birds aren't singing at you and the sun don't wanna shine/ The girls are looking at you like you're a piece of pie."
That ping-ponging beat comes back and the song slowly builds with peculiar layers —- a lonely piano, a bold linear guitar strum, malfunctioning ghost vocals, drum punches, and more weird glitchy vocal things. The chorus is simple but starkly desperate: "I wanna jive tonight/ I wanna shake my hips/ I wanna move like that but I only seem to move like this." It's a prodding, nudging track that sounds like it's crawling out of quicksand. It's weird and so good!
In a statement about the song, the band noted:
It's all in our hands isn't it? jive is a dance between choices.
Light jive dark good jive black ice light steam bad jive good plain jive joy ice cream you jive pain red yellow green blue pink purple orange velvet rope ripe rose ash sand yellow soap water sky I feel
So so I feel wanna live I’ve built up up down down jive jive on a horse in a seat belt jive
Jive in a star in the strawberry moon shoot it up in a clown that could swing jive smile so it reigns in the town.
The new single comes before their appearance at this year's Glastonbury Festival.
Check it out below.
