Yumi Zouma recently went to see Oasis, but they've been busy with their own music too. All year the Christchurch combo has been kicking out new songs — "Bashville On The Sugar," "Blister," "Cross My Heart And Hope To Die" — and they can now confirm that all of those songs are on No Love Lost To Kindness, their first album since 2022's spectacular Present Tense.
These new songs have found Yumi Zouma steering their sparkling indie pop somewhere slightly darker and harder without letting go of its majesty. Their statement on today's new single "Drag" sums up the new direction well:
We wanted the song to feel like slowly rotating in sludge and then screaming the most anthemic chorus at the top of your lungs. Hooks from a 1998 issue of Smash Hits are covered with samples and industrial synth arpeggios from the nonexistent soundtrack of the crossover prequel for RoboCop and The Fifth Element, featuring Silverchair, Shihad, Garbage, Stellar*, Evanescence, and Placebo.
Directed by Yumi Zouma and Julian Vares, the "Drag" video conjures a similar aesthetic:
There’s something about the action movies of our youth — The Bourne Identity, Swordfish, Hackers, Enemy Of The State — where digitalisation was exploding, and cell phones like the Nokia 8110 were cinematic icons. We loved how these films romanticised data infrastructures and "the mainframe."
Watch below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "95"
02 "Bashville On The Sugar"
03 "Blister"
04 "Chicago 2AM"
05 "Cowboy Without A Clue"
06 "Cross My Heart And Hope To Die"
07 "Did You See Her?"
08 "Drag"
09 "Every False Embrace"
10 "Judgement Day"
11 "Phoebe’s Song"
12 "Waiting For The Cards To Fall"
No Love Lost To Kindness is out 1/30 via Nettwerk.
