single of the week: little dragon

Like fellow Göteborgers El Perro Del Mar, Love Is All, Audrey and The Knife, Little Dragon are well worth gluing your ear to. Their self-titled debut was one of the highlights of 2007, largely due to the unconscionably soulful vocals of frontwoman Yukimi Nagano and a willingness to experiment with a previously unfielded marriage between organic pop, alluringly off-kilter electronica and accents of jazz. New single ‘Fortune’ first surfaced as a bonus track on the Japanese release of Little Dragon before being touted as a (very) preliminary taster for second album Berlinmaster in March 2008, while Hideyuki Katsumata’s animated video for the song went online in late October.

The album may have taken the band much longer to complete than was originally thought, but if this double A-side 7″ is anything to go by, it will be worth the wait. ‘Fortune’ is by no means an obvious single but it successfully furthers the Little Dragon sound without losing sight of everything good that the debut had to offer. A gauzy ballad that sticks with the reclining ease of earlier releases but adds in more emphasis on Håkan Wirenstrand’s otherworldly synths, it bodes well for the band in 2009.

‘Blinking Pigs’ ups the synth-pop ante, delivering a gently insistent grower that’s easily good enough to rival the likes of Little Boots and Telepathe. Fortune favours the patient.

The 7″ is available in a limited edition of 500 copies through Peacefrog.

Buy it on iTunes

‘Fortune’

Written by: Alan Pedder

Tags: blinking pigs, little dragon

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 9:47 am and is filed under reviews, single of the week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.