Opus Kink are a Brighton band who have been making a lot of press noise, and they'll release their debut album The Sweet Goodbye this summer. Their sound is hard to describe. It's a churning and vaguely countrified take on post-punk, with deep and sonorous baritone vocals and lots of jazzy horns. Last month, I wrote, "They remind me a bit of Morphine, if Morphine were both British and hyperactive, which means they don't actually remind me that much of Morphine." But their new song doesn't sound anything like that. It's a whole other trip.
We've already posted Opus Kink's The Sweet Goodbye singles "I'm A Pretty Showboy" and "Come Over, Do Me Wrong," and their new track "The Head Tree" takes a hard zag away from those tracks. "The Head Tree" features the members of a fellow Brighton band, folk-punks the New Eves, and a pounding and frenetic house beat that doesn't sound like anything I've heard from them. It's a heady blur — the kicks, the horns, the male and female vocals, the vaguely Druidic melody, the extremely specific lyrics. The song has a rich, vengeful historic backstory. Here's frontman Angus Rogers' explanation:
In 1685, Alice Molland was the last woman to be tried and hanged as a witch in England, strung up on a "Head Tree" just outside of Exeter. Now, from her burial place underneath an Aldi carpark in the town of Heavitree, she summons the spirits of her fallen sisters-in-sin — Mary Trembles, Temperance Lloyd, and Susannah Edwards — as well as, for some reason, the spirit of the Bee Gees, in order to tell her tale. Uttered through the coerced mouths of Opus Kink and the New Eves.
This song fucking rules. Kyle McCarthy and Reuben Davies Lindley directed the shadowy video, and you can see it below.
The Sweet Goodbye is out 7/31 on So Recordings.
