Legendary Soul singer collaborates on new version of "Only", from new album 'Tomorrows I', out now on City Slang.
Last month Son Lux dropped ‘Tomorrows I’, the first album in a three-volume body of work, which will unfurl over the coming year through City Slang. Today, they reveal the next element of this ambitious project - a rework of album track "Only" with iconic soul singer William Bell taking the vocal lead.
“Only (Chasing You)” reconsiders the album version, with the mellifluous voice of William Bell replacing the crushed gravel of Lott‘s original delivery. The song explores the intangible and temporal nature of identity and relationships. It reflects on the blurring of time passing and evolving from small to increments to entire lifetimes, and throughout, an increasing feeling of losing, not gaining, identity.
Bhatia and Chang fashion “Only” into an elastic lurch, where musical time shrinks and expands without warning. Bell's delivery contends with this elasticity, exclaiming, “When you took me from the days, you took me from the years.”
More pervasive than a virus, anxiety and urgency has spread across our physical and virtual landscapes. The growing inequities of centuries old and current day complexes of oppression has reached a critical and necessary breaking point, forcing us out of our severe isolation back together in a call for justice. All the while, the continued trajectory towards climate catastrophe still creeps across the horizon into our view, another result of the valuing of profit over people.
These defining traits of the present moment find parallels on the newest body of work by Son Lux: ‘Tomorrows’, a long-format album to be released in three volumes over the course of a year.
On ‘Tomorrows’, Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia, and Ian Chang train their sights on volatile principles: imbalance, disruption, collision, redefinition. But for all of its instability, ‘Tomorrows’ exploration of breaking points and sustained frictional places is ultimately in service of something rewarding and necessary: the act of questioning, challenging, tearing down and actively rebuilding one’s own identity.
‘Tomorrows I’ is out now via City Slang.
Purchase & streaming here.