Daily Dose: The Japanese House, “Follow My Girl”

Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team.

Amber Bain, aka The Japanese House, today (Nov. 13) shared “Follow My Girl,” the second single off her forthcoming full-length debut Good At Falling, out Mar. 1, 2019, through Dirty Hit/Interscope Records.

Bain, who wrote, sang and co-produced much of Good At Falling, worked with producers BJ Burton and The 1975’s George Daniel to fine-tune the record’s sonics. Burton has been a large component of the ethereal synth soundscapes found on recent releases by Bon Iver, Low, and Francis and the Lights, and Daniel’s The 1975 have somehow found a way to make darkness fluorescent on their poppy, stylish records. Those strains are felt on “Follow My Girl”—the twisted, vocal loop-based beatmaking that seems to be Burton’s specialty is all over the place here, and the lilting dance-bounce can be traced back to Daniel, especially since Bain and Daniel worked togehther so closely throughout the formative years of The Japanese House.

But the song feels like nothing more than a refinement of the chillwave-dappled dream-pop that Bain has been making for years now. “Follow My Girl” finds the pulse that had always thumped deep within Bain’s oceanic songs and foregrounds it. Vapor-y saxes, slippery fuzz swells and compressed drum machines combine into an oddly organic-feeling groove. Texture has been an essential part of past Japanese House songs, but now there’s a shape to all that feeling, a bumping, grooving rhythm that moves forward coolly and relentlessly.

Listen to “Follow My Girl” below. The Japanese House will be performing a run of shows in December. Find a full list of dates, along with the Good At Falling album art and tracklist, further down.