Born from the sound of a “raunchy distorted guitar,” the irresistible single off the Brooklyn band’s forthcoming LP Hey Sunny is about letting go of control
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As humans, we naturally crave control.
In a world that’s still, let’s be real, like 99.9% a mystery, we want to believe that we have some say in the insanity. That we can work to achieve our ideal outcome, that we can determine our own destinies, that we’re writing our own script rather than playing a role in a pre-established narrative.
In many ways, a sense of agency is obviously healthy—and more than that, imperative. We wouldn’t have evolved very far without inventing fire or survived for long as a species if we waited for bugs, sabertooth tigers and whatever weird fruits we were foraging to crawl into our caves and roast and eat themselves. As for more modern (and upper-Maslow-level) dreams and desires, you won’t get hired for the sick gig you don’t apply for; inspiration doesn’t arrive if you don’t have the discipline to sit down with your instrument every day; and as much as we might wish romance would magically appear at our apartment door on a Tuesday night like a bonus spring roll in our Seamless order, the rule is that you have to put yourself out there and make an effort to find someone. And then even more of one to keep them.
However, like with all human behaviors, there’s the inevitable tipping point where the constructive becomes destructive. After all, the world isn’t a vacuum, life isn’t a lab setting and as we’ve all been repeatedly reminded over the last two years, we’re each very much at the mercy of forces of nature, acts of god and, of course, each other—for better or for worse or for weird. No matter how much we might plot and plan and carefully organize our own actions, there are always millions of other variables at play, and if we’re heads down, clinging on desperately and attempting to control everything in our orbit, we’ll not only go crazy, we’ll probably miss out.
Or in TLDR form, I offer you the explanation of the excellent new single from Kid Le Chat, which David Wilson of the band simply describes as being “about letting go of control,” adding that “trying too hard can make you lose sight of what you want.”
So as hard as it may be, the key just might be to surrender a little bit. And sometimes the best way to arrive at the desired destination is simply to go with the flow.
And with that, I’m thrilled to present the beautifully spacey//shimmery//dancey//catchy combo of synths and guitar that’s quick become my favorite song of 2022—a ranking I’m confident I’d still be awarding if we were a full 10 months, and not just 10 days, into the year.
While the lyric video technically dropped on January 1st (and has since racked up 40,000 views), it’s far cooler than a simple Soundcloud link, so consider this an advance preview of the song itself, which is out and streaming everywhere for your adding-to-playlists pleasure TOMORROW.
From Kid Le Chat, this is “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.”
“Almost, almost just isn’t it // It’s never a good thing // When you push it push it, push it, push it too far
You know, you know this doesn’t fit // You can’t see the difference // When you’re workin’, workin’, workin’ too hard“
In addition to the short and sweet summary from David above, Leo Moretti of the Kid Le Chat also sent over some intel on the circumstances and the specific sound that served as the killer song’s starting point:
“Life in quarantine and all the uncertainties that surrounded it certainly influenced not only the lyrics on ‘Horseshoes and Hand Grenades’ but also the process of coming up with timbres for it. Having all that time sitting at home staring at synths and guitars was actually quite a joy in a dark time so you try to create sounds to swim in and get a little comfort from. Nothing gets us more excited than finding one single timbre from which a whole song can be born. In this case the raunchy distorted guitar was the starting point and everything else followed.”
As for the starting point for Kid Le Chat, having personally spent nine years in Austin and the last five in Brooklyn, the idea of a band forming in a brewery seems perfectly natural, but the originality of this particular band’s origin story is upped because the meet cute // beat cute in question happened at a microbrewery down in Rio de Janeiro. There David, an Austinite, and Leo, a Brazilian-born New Yorker (ok, it makes perfect sense), started the sonic experimentation and exploration that led to the formation of Kid Le Chat, and in 2018 the pair released their second album Lost Critters and moved their persons and project up to to Brooklyn.
Beyond a bit of band history, this is also very good news for les fans of le Kid Le Chat, because getting down to Rio for the band’s upcoming record release show in March would be pretttttty tricky on such short notice, but Ridgewood? Now THAT we can swing.
The Kid Le Chat album Hey Sunny drops on March 8th. Mark your cal for the celebration featuring Sean McVerry, Lily Jeanette and Boyfriend Genes that evening at TV Eye, pre-game with the band’s 2021 EP Luck Comes too Late and please remember that—unlike, say, horseshoes and hand grenades—this is one case where almost justtttt doesn’t cut it. So please don’t show up on like, March 9th or something.
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Follow Kid Le Chat at @kidlechat, buy their music on Bandcamp and add the songs to your Spotify playlists!
Feature image provided by the band.