Savages – “She Will”
In Endless Playlist, Treble’s staff helps you stock your own playlists by highlighting the best new tracks to come across our desks, laptops and ipods each week.
The cover of Savages’ new album, Silence Yourself, is imprinted with a short piece of prose that begins:
The world used to be silent
Now it has too many voices
And the noise
Is a constant distraction
It could be read as a statement about media, or technology, or how the proliferation of each has led to the obscurity of any real truth, buried underneath what amounts to a 24-hour cycle of conjecture and obfuscation. Savages aren’t an explicitly political band, but the UK-based post-punk quartet is having none of it, honing their sharp-edged sound with laser focus, cutting through needless ephemera in favor of a singular, precision assault.
There’s a dance-friendly sensibility about “She Will,” the first single from Silence Yourself, but this ain’t no disco. Urgent, abrasive, but darkly ominous in the style of early ’80s British post-punks like The Sound or the Comsat Angels, “She Will” bears a sinister groove, and a ferocious, yet restrained vocal from singer Jenny Beth, who uses the song’s title as a laundry list of actions from a fierce, unnamed “she”: “She will enter the bed,” “She will kiss like a man.” By the swirling, manic close of the song, “She will” becomes less of a statement than a threat. Beth is such a powerful, overwhelming presence that one voice is all this command track needs.
[found on Silence Yourself, Matador; out May 7 ]
