Hear the new lush bossa-nova-pop song from Lost Weekend, “Rush Street”

On January 13, Lost Weekend, the project of singer/songwriter Erik Laroi, will release debut album Memorias via Mother West Records. And today, Lost Weekend has shared a new song from that album, “Rush Street,” a single that echoes Bacharachian arrangements in impossibly stylish surroundings. It’s a lushly arranged mid-century pop number with shades of ’60s orchestral pop and samba/bossa nova, echoing the likes of Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 and Kings of Convenience alike. It might be December, but the vibes are strictly late summertime.

Laroi said about the song in a statement, “I wrote ‘Rush Street’ on acoustic guitar with the goal of trying to combine the styles of Joao Gilberto and Belle & Sebastian.  As the arrangements and vocal melodies developed, it turned into a brighter, more easy listening type of tune and I wanted to counter that with some darker subject matter.  I’d been reading a lot of Denis Johnson around that time, and that kinda seeped into the song’s narrative about two down-and-out lovers lost on the Chicago “L” in the dead of winter.”

Check out “Rush Street” below, and pre-order the album here.