Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee have shared their new single “We Got To Move” featuring Modest Mouse singer and frontman Isaac Brock.
The track is taken from their debut album ‘Los Angeles‘ due to be released on November 3 via Play It Again Sam. Pre-order it here.
Made up of two of the most illustrious and inventive drummers of the post-punk era, The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst and Budgie from Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Creatures, along with stellar producer and multi-instrumentalist Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, this unlikely alt-supergroup have spent the last four years spiriting up one of the most extraordinary albums to appear in 2023.
Of “We Got To Move,” the band note:
“This is one of the more existential tracks on ‘Los Angeles.’ It’s an homage to Philip Glass, Ron Fricke and Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, with words by Isaac Brock,” notes Budgie.
“Isaac is one of the most unique voices that we have. He’s brilliant,” adds Jacknife. “He gave us this weird, anxious, beautiful rush of a song. To pump up the duality within the song my daughters and I came up with a chorus that made us giddy with its ridiculousness. The song is absurd. The sound is absurd. And it’s about bugs.”
With its eclectic mix of styles, Lol also asks, “Where else do you get Strings, DAF synths and Bhangra-Punjabi style percussion? Plus you get Isaac Brock and Jacknife and his daughters singing up a beautiful storm of a track.“
The track comes accompanied by a suitably unhinged, raucous video directed by Daniel Rashid which features musician, comedian and actor Fred Armisen letting it all out alongside Lol and Budgie, and a disembodied Brock. “The video has me and Lol as Clockwork Orange Droogs Drumming on a Cadillac, while Fred Armisen takes a Sledgehammer to a WC,” notes Budgie. Armisen adds, “I loved being a part of this. I feel very lucky that I got to work with Budgie and Lol… It gave me a feeling of ‘drummers unite!’”
Watch/listen below.
The album’s 13 tracks dive into freedom and slavery, beauty and decay, hope and despair, and also features an astonishing list of guest vocalists and musicians – The Edge (U2), Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, Civil Rights avant-garde artist Lonnie Holley, Mary Lattimore, Starcrawler wild child Arrow de Wilde, Mark Bowen (IDLES) and more.
Los Angeles Tracklist:
- This Is What It Is (To Be Free) [with Bobby Gillespie]
- Los Angeles [with James Murphy]
- Uh Oh [with Arrow de Wilde and Mark Bowen (IDLES)]
- Ghosted At Home [with Bobby Gillespie]
- Train With No Station [with The Edge]
- Bodies [with Lonnie Holley and Mary Lattimore]
- Everything And Nothing
- Travel Channel [with Pan Amsterdam]
- Country of the Blind [with Bobby Gillespie]
- The Past (Being Eaten)
- We Got To Move [with Isaac Brock]
- Noche Oscura [with The Edge]
- Skins [with James Murphy]
Photo credit: Pat Martin
