New Me, Same Us
After five studio albums, Little Dragon has established a reputation for genre-blending experimentation, trance-inducing ’80s pop, and downtempo ’90s R&B. For five albums, the band remained faithful to their signature breathy, dreamy dance club sound, but in the three years since the Swedish quartet released *Season High*, the band has matured lyrically. The subject matter on *New Me, Same Us* ranges from commentary on the monotony of life to coping with loss of loved ones. “It definitely feels like a personal album for us,” lead singer Yukimi Nagano tells Apple Music during a track-by-track interview for the band’s latest record. **Hold On** “It started very much as a house track, actually. The demo version of it really reminded me of ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ by Massive Attack, which is a band that has been a huge influence for us. The song has a deeper meaning about accepting change, which can go for a lot of the other tracks as well. That one in particular is about being able to let go of a former part of yourself and accept the new you in a way. And not being ready to let go of that part of you, the older part of you.” **Rush** “‘Rush’ is basically just a song about this feeling of our modern lives and everything moving as a whirlwind, really hectically, and not being able to really reflect on your inner self. In the midst of just being this arrow moving forwards in life, you\'re filled with feelings of fear and the separation anxiety and all these kinds of things that you maybe can\'t even deal with properly. It’s about that frenzy of modern-day life.” **Another Lover** “I had this beat from the guys and I really loved it. I had a melody that I was working on and I was just sort of a bit stuck. It was my birthday and I had a mushroom, a magic mushroom. I just had to lay down and close my eyes and embrace what was happening. I just felt this huge amount of pain and sorrow for a person that I had not been able to feel any empathy for. And as I felt all those things, I was like, ‘Okay, let me snap out of this. I really want to write this song.’ So in the midst of that, I sort of wrote the song. It just felt very genuine and like my heart was wide open. I sort of recorded the vocals straight after that with snot running out of my nose and tears flowing. I was just like, oh. My voice was so groggy and hoarse. So actually we recorded it the next day.” **Kids** “‘Kids’ is one of our tracks that was very playful and experimental. It\'s kind of dark and hopeful at the same time. It\'s definitely a reflection on just this time of individualism. Everyone sort of being the star of their own story and kids growing up into this madness. It has an angelic vibe to it with the synth, but it also has the darkness. It has a lot of mixed emotions, and it kind of was one of those tracks that we felt the album needed. It wasn\'t that single or anything, but it had that experimental vibe that we love and that we\'ve tried to keep in the band and that\'s important to us.” **Every Rain** “The fact that we\'re all from this earth, this planet, this universe together. In that sense, we\'re every rain, we\'re the clouds, we\'re the sky, we\'re everything here together, but we change form.” New Fiction “That started with Fred \[Källgren Wallin\] singing the chorus and messing with sort of the demo version. I recall him saying that he went out to a party and he kind of just felt like he was seeing it as a very shallow experience where everyone was trying to be something. Sometimes you just feel misplaced in that and you feel like everyone\'s almost playing roles and following some kind of an invisible curriculum in a way. We need new fantasies to live up to that are more epic than this. My favorite part of that song is the piano solo in the end, because we have a grand piano in the studio right now. We\'ve never had it on any song. Fred had a bit of anxiety because it\'s not a cheap instrument. It takes all this space and it has this aura around it that is just very serious. He got so excited about having the piano that once it arrived, it put on a big pressure. We were very happy to lighten that pressure by having him sort of let go on that track.” **Sadness** “Sadness is the space of transition; it can truly lead to something beautiful. So it\'s kind of a portal where you can heal yourself, where your tears are something that can be something beautiful and helpful. It\'s something that I\'ve always enjoyed, when the music has a certain emotion and the lyrics kind of contradict that.” **Are You Feeling Sad?** “We have a lot of songs that didn\'t end up on the album, but \'Are You Feeling Sad?\' was just a beat that felt infectious to us and fun. So I didn\'t have any deep thoughts about it. I didn\'t sit and explode my brain on what to write on that. It was just sort of freestyling, going into the booth and putting some vocals in. I kind of liked the idea of a dancing song kind of also being a soothing lullaby-ish kind of song, you know? Then with the Kali \[Uchis\] feature, we were really excited because I just really love her verse on it, so it added something definitely to the whole song. Lifted it up.” **Where You Belong** “It started just guitar and vocals. Not typical Little Dragon, just crazy beat from somebody\'s computer. The song is about the feeling of losing somebody and when you still have their number in your phone and you want to hear their voice or you want to talk to that person. There\'s that realization of them not being there, but they\'re always with you, you know? You close your eyes, you know that they\'re with you no matter what.” **Stay Right Here** “‘Stay Right Here’ is a love song. Every album is a sort of reflection of where we are in our lives at the moment. I met somebody in my life, someone now that means so much to me. It\'s kind of literal, even in the lyrics.” **Water** “‘Water’ is also a song that really changed from the demo. It started very electronic and kind of became in the end a song that sounded almost a little country. It\'s written in a shattered way—I usually just write different sentences that I feel at the moment. It\'s about time passing and sitting, becoming older and looking out. I wanted to get that sort of feeling of a journey of life, starting somewhere and then ending in another space. You start out in the desert and then you kind of end out in the water.”
Little Dragon—the pioneering Swedish four-piece fronted by enigmatic vocalist Yukimi Nagano, with multi-instrumentalists Håkan Wirenstarnd and Fredrik Wallin on keyboards and bass respectively and Erik Bodin on drums and percussion—return with their sixth studio album, “New Me, Same Us”. For a band who are proudly left-of-centre and fiercely protective of doing things on their own terms, they have achieved no shortage of mainstream recognition. Grammy nominated for 2014’s “Nabuma Rubberband”, Little Dragon have long been seen as one of the most sought-after groups to work with. Chalking up an enviable list of collaborators throughout the years, working with equally groundbreaking artists like BADBADNOTGOOD, Gorillaz, SBTRKT, Flying Lotus, Flume, Kaytranada, Big Boi (who was first put on to the band via fellow Outkast member André 3000), De La Soul, DJ Shadow, Tinashe, Mac Miller, Future, Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans and more. Their hugely popular and highly regarded live performances have spawned a decade-spanning touring career which has seen them recently co-headline a show with Flying Lotus at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl and perform at some of the world’s most revered festivals such as Coachella, Glastonbury, Bestival, Lollapalooza, Melt, Dour, Sonar and Tyler, The Creator’s ‘Camp Flog Gnaw’. Having played together since their school days in Gothenburg—where they’d meet up after class to jam and listen to records by artists like A Tribe Called Quest and Alice Coltrane —“New Me, Same Us” is the sound of a band going back to basics and falling back in love with their instruments: drums, bass, keyboards, harp, guitar and voice, to produce some of their most focussed and inarguably best music to date. “This album has been the most collaborative for us yet.” they explain, “which might sound weird considering we’ve been making music together for all these years, but we worked hard at being honest, finding the courage to let go of our egos and be pieces of something bigger.” Entirely self-produced and recorded at their long-term home-built studio in Gothenburg, “New Me, Same Us” represents another chapter in the continuing evolution of Little Dragon, finding new direction in their unique style of unhurried, off-kilter r’n’b, pop and electronics, they sound as rejuvenated and energised as ever. The record also finds them in a reflective mood, Yukimi’s distinctive vocals musing on transitions, longing, and saying goodbye. “We are all on our own personal journeys,” they say, “full of change, yet still we stand united with stories we believe in, that make us who we are.” Lead single ‘Hold On’ is a message about breaking away and moving on, ‘Rush’ is about yearning for a love now lost, ‘Another Lover’ is described as a daydream of heartache, “I can’t understand what I'm doing / don't understand where we going” Yukimi laments in the opening lines. The aptly named ‘Sadness’ speaks to “how you might think you know someone but then time shows you a new face” say the band. ‘Where You Belong’ is a lullaby of fear of loss and death. There is room for optimism too, though. ‘New Fiction’ seeks that space in which to create new narratives and forge your own path and ‘Are You Feeling Sad’ is a reminder to take a step back and not worry too much: “you gonna be alright / don’t worry don’t worry / things gonna turn out fine”. Artwork is produced by award-winning Swedish director, producer, screenwriter and animator Johannes Nyholm (who’s shadow puppetry short film ‘Dreams from the Woods’ was used as the music video for Little Dragon’s ‘Twice’) and continues the band’s long history of working with boundary-pushing creatives across the worlds of art and design, including IB Kamara (i-D, Dazed, Vogue) and David Uzochukwu (Dior, FKA Twigs, Nike) on previous album “Season High”, Vicki King on their “Lover Chanting” EP and Lena Mačka on their recent “Tongue Kissing” single.
The Swedish electro-pop group’s first album for Ninja Tune is a welcome departure, finally infusing their own studio work with the creative energy of their collaborative sessions.
A classic amalgamation of genres and sounds finds Little Dragon at their best
The Swedish pop group find creative harmony, with dazzling, unhinged moments that are worth fighting over – but a frustrating complacency, too
Little Dragon craft music you want to bathe or even drown in—it’s that enrapturing.
Little Dragon seemed to fall into a rut with the rigid and unaffecting Season High, and started to pull out of it with Lover Chanting EP, a livelier set with post-disco R&B and pacific dub-pop leanings.
New Me, Same Us finds its vigour in the sweet spot between pure pop and Little Dragon’s more adventurous tendencies.
Little Dragon are a band whose star power comes from their laidback cool, an image that has served them well since they started making music...
‘An important statement from a band who have managed to keep control of their own process’Little Dragon are one of the most dynamic collectives around, moving through life with an unapologetic need to experiment with their sound.
Swedish genre-hoppers return with an infectious, back-to-basics record that reminds us why we fell in love with them in the first place
New Me, Same Us by Little Dragon, album review by Steven Ovadia The Swwedish quartet's forthcoming release comes out on March 27th via Ninja Tune