Little Dragon Craft a Sonic Escape on New Me, Same Us
Now more than ever, the Swedish band’s electronic sound is the escapism we need
Listening to Gorillaz’ 2010 album Plastic Beach feels like a crash-course in transportative music. You can imagine basking in the sun on the tropical island featured in the cover art, giant frozen cocktail in hand. Of course, as a fictional band, Gorillaz have special insight into creating a fantastical sound, but they had help from collaborators, including Little Dragon. The Swedish four-piece is no stranger to world-building in their work, particularly in the music video for their 2007 song “After the Rain,” which features a miniature landscape dominated by snails. Their whimsy and frontperson Yukimi Nagano’s ethereal voice made Little Dragon the perfect fit to bring Gorillaz’ “Empire Ants” into the stratosphere.
Just over a decade later, Little Dragon still are incorporating escapism into their latest album in a time when we desperately need it. New Me, Same Us has been billed as a return to the band’s roots, self-produced and recorded in their studio in Gothenburg. There is a clear through-line to their self-titled debut, with Nagano’s soulful voice grounding the band as they test the boundaries of electro-pop. On their latest release, though, Little Dragon seem more willing to retreat into a world of their own creation, one with a pastel, plastic sheen to it, comforting in its artificiality.
Part of manufacturing their own world is coming up with the right language for it. Nagano often sings fragments of sentences on New Me, Same Us, her singular vocals transforming even the most nonsensical lines into poetry. The way she utters “pink roller coaster crack” on “Kids” is so satisfying, even if we don’t necessarily know what it means in the context of the song (an exploration of what it’s like to age as a musician). Little Dragon always aims for the evocative, like “Rush rush blowing coming going / Wind be blowing rush rush blowing” on “Rush” or “Fiction pump blood flooding water love / We felt like gods again” on “New Fiction.” Beachy final track “Water” features some of Little Dragon’s most potent imagery to date: “I dissolve into your embrace.”