The Chemical Brothers – “Under Neon Lights” (Feat. St. Vincent)
St. Vincent’s Annie Clark has lately been playing festival stages at the same time as EDM DJs draw much bigger crowds at nearby stages and as their thumps threaten to drown out her robo-shredding. That’s not easy! Even with a pretty amazing cyborg-styled live show, an art-pop star has a tough time competing with the lure of the mass party. So it makes a certain kind of sense that Clark is now intoning live-for-today party-talk on the new single from the Chemical Brothers, who were headlining festivals back when EDM was still called electronica. The new track “Under Neon Lights” is a lot closer to the Chems’ squiggly bounce than it is to Clark’s squiggly guitar-pop, but she still sounds like she belongs on the track. Of the collab, Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands says, “We’re always looking to work with likeminded people who do something a bit different to us. Annie is an amazing artist who was very up for experimenting.” The song follows “Sometimes I Feel So Deserted” as the second single from the Chems’ forthcoming album Born In The Echoes. Check it out below.
Born In The Echoes is out 7/17 on Astralwerks. Rowlands will be heading out on tour without longtime partner Ed Simons; longtime visual collaborator Adam Smith will stand in instead.