The Legends face up to real world anxieties on new track "Smoke and Mirrors" [Premiere]

22 June 2015, 16:40 | Written by Andrew Hannah

(Tracks)

(The Legends)

After an absence of six years, we once again find ourselves up against The Legends as Best Fit premieres new track “Smoke and Mirrors”.

Johan Angergård’s band of Swedes, releasing something for the first time away from his own Labrador Records, have again performed a sharp U-turn in style meaning that their sixth album It’s Love bears little resemblance to 2009’s noisy Over and Over.

Following on from lead single “Keep Him”, this latest track does little to belie Angergård’s confession that in the period between this album and the last he felt like he didn’t belong and found himself “free floating”.

“Smoke and Mirrors” is heavy-lidded and narcotic with vocodered/autotuned vocals, the pitter-patter of a drum machine and washes of synths that seem to suggest waking from a dream, only to realise the anxiety of the real world and all its problems and heartaches are all too genuine. The song is hopelessness and hope meeting on the bridge between reality and fantasy, with Angergård in the middle struggling to work out if It’s Love is all a deception and a distortion, or if there’s substance in this incipient promise.

It’s Love is out via Cascine on 30 June and you can listen to “Smoke and Mirrors” below.