Beautiful electronic vibes that draw the listener in
Edinburgh duo Slim Wrist return an understated slice of leftfield pop ‘The Soft’, the first single from their upcoming album, Closer For Comforting (due September 2022).
‘The Soft’ bops out a fragmented beat to drift into a dreamy trip, always threatening to burst out of its hesitant groove. Vocalist Fern Morris’ hard-hitting pop chorus mantra, “simmer down”, lingers beautifully alongside glitching samples and building electronics that herald the warmth of summer. Slim Wrist (FKA Super Inuit) are Fern Morris and Brian Pokora, their assertive beats and organic tones combine pop sensibilities with an understated poignancy.
Their music has drawn comparisons to the likes of Cocteau Twins as well as Portishead, Broadcast and Sylvan Esso. The duo first started writing together after meeting online back in 2016, and have come from defined roles to a more organic unit over time that has evolved into the Slim Wrist of today. The sprawling shoe gaze guitar washiness of their early material has been refined in favour of a more direct approach to writing a pop track.
Fern: “‘The Soft’ typifies our sound quite a bit, though it’s the more poppy end. The starting point was the vocal sample thread running throughout it, which is an idea we both return to. If I can do something with my voice then I like to, having that kind of limitation can be quite helpful. While we weren’t playing live we both had a bit more time to spend on making new music and with that space, the song formed quite fully and relatively quickly, and the lyrics too were based around a sense of concern and control and how those relate to each other.”
Brian: “With ‘The Soft’, I really like how it starts out as a hesitant broken beat. That’s what makes the chorus hit the hardest. It gives way to quite a poppy chorus, It’s catchy, sharp, quite direct, and also relates quite well back to some of the music that we’ve previously released. It’s not a massive step away, but it’s a positive step.”
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