Majical Cloudz have just announced the follow up to their 2013 LP Impersonator with the release of the “Silver Car Crash”. The song is named after and thematically centered around a popular Andy Warhol painting of the same name. While it serves as a subtle and somehow painful reminder that somewhere in the world people buy paintings for literally hundreds of millions of dollars, the song is foremost the first single of of the duo’s upcoming LP Are You Alone? out on October 16 via Matador Records.
The Montreal duo has built and cultivated their sound around space. One could say that’s true of all music, but in the case of the Majical Cloudz it’s seems like a more conscious decision to never shy away from leaving a composition open. By not flooding their songs with instrumentation, they give them a no frills elegance. “Silver Car Crash” continues that trend but builds on it by upping the grandeur.
The song starts with leddy synths treated by a crystalline message “I never show it but I am always laughing / I want to kiss you inside a car that’s crashing / and we will both die laughing / cause there is nothing left to do”. It’s that really endearing and articulate brand of drama that gives the song such weight. As the song goes on, lead singer Devon Welsh lays down line after line of spot on melody and vivid lyrics. The lyrics aren’t the songs only grand gesture. The synths around the two minute mark rip the song from from its low hazy hum and pull it up into an orange cloud broken up by protruding beams light, impossible to see through. As the song comes down Welsh moves in for a final verse in which he sings of splitting his head head open in a car accident and unending love as if they’re the same thing; almost articulating the way in which they’re both beautiful and ultimately meaningless or perhaps grotesque and meaningful.
