Warpaint - New Song

A bit like the jagged-looking triangle which fronts ‘Exquisite Corpse’ - their 2008 debut EP - Warpaint would collapse without the instinctive, counter-balancing interaction between all its individual members. Remove just one ingredient, and nothing stands up. It’s the rare kind of precarious assembly that only the very best bands possess; and together Stella Mozgawa, Theresa Wayman, Emily Kokal and Jenny Lee Lindberg form a highly formidable, chai tea loving gang. Their sonic results might be vastly different each time, but the core chemistry fuelling this band is key, and unshakeable.

After several years doing their own respective things in a whole host of other side-projects, the wryly named ‘New Song’ (the first hint of things to come on Warpaint’s third album ‘Heads Up’) sounds leagues removed from anything Warpaint have done previously. And after the bold leap between their muddied and submerged debut album ‘The Fool,’ to their second album’s soaring, saturated dreamscape - by way of the clattering industrial underworld of ‘Disco/Very,’ and ‘Love Is To Die’s cyclic, misted incantations - that thirst for reinvention should come as no surprise.

Atop a wibbling, cheery synth-line that pogoes along with all the tenacity of Jigglypuff bouncing his way towards the Adventure Time convention, playfulness takes centre stage on ‘New Song’; from the slightly silly song title, to playful, nonsensical lyrics like “you’ve got the moves, bang bang, baby.” Always creatively refreshed, never predictable, and always utilising their band’s potent strain of magic in ever different ways, it’s a bloody relief to have Warpaint back again.