Bergen trio Chain Wallet channel melodic melancholia on “World I Used to Call Mine”

The barreling rhythm juxtaposed against glassy guitars evokes the melodrama of The Smiths, the bite of the Psychedelic Furs and the more contemporary gloom of The Raveonettes and Merchandise – so much so that this could've been pulled from Merchandise’s classic 2014 LP After The End.

The eerie, gothic qualities of the track make perfect sense when you consider where they wrote it: after writing their first record in their hometown of Bergen in Norway, they decamped to a small cabin on a remote beach in the southwest of the country to record their follow-up, from which this track is drawn. Here, among desolate beaches, torrid weather and the odd freezing surfer, you find the heart of “World I Used to Call Mine”.

The track explores the human urge to find order in chaos, as the band explains: “The song is about somebody on a quest for a cosmic plan. It is supposed to portray the final phase of a rite of passage, the incorporation ceremony into the new world, but something goes horribly wrong.”