As it turns out, Broods isn’t always brooding. In fact, they’re often quite drunk in love.
If you’ve not already been following along for the ride, the New Zealand-based brother-sister duo began making waves across the blogosphere late last year with their moody debut, “Bridges.” They continued to get moodier still with “Never Gonna Change” earlier this month.
After signing with Capitol Records, the duo announced a self-titled debut EP for release in February, entirely produced alongside Joel Little, who co-crafted Lorde‘s fantastic debut, Pure Heroine.
But since patience is overrated, the tracks have since made their way online today — and the anticipation was well worth the wait.
Along with “Bridges” and “Never Gonna Change,” the set includes four new songs, all of them excellent in their own way.
“Sleep Baby Sleep” is a mesmerizing lullaby coated in strings and a kind of hypnotic tripping beat that characterizes much of Lorde’s debut. “Pretty Thing” provides a sparkling flash of layered vocals and lush uptempo electronica, and plays exactly like what you might imagine Imogen Heap recording with Ellie Goulding to sound like in 2014. “Lost in love with you, it’s a pretty thing,” Georgia sighs.
And then there’s “Coattail,” a soldiering midtempo that, armed with a major power-pop hook of a chorus (“Oh, we’ll ride the coattails to the finish line!”) and a heavenly bridge, caps off the collection on an incredibly impressive high note.
Of all the new songs though, the chillingly intimate “Taking You There” is my personal favorite.
Kicking off with a gentle guitar strum and a quiet thumping beat, the track carries along with a kind of Death Cab Meets Cutie electro-acoustic feel: “If you hold my hand and take me where you go, I’ll show you the side that no one knows,” Georgia near-whispers, her brother providing the perfect husky harmonization in the background. The chorus itself is a thing of beauty, swallowing the duo’s vocals into a tunnel of echoing pulsations. It’s a beautiful love song, complimented with the kind of twinkling production that feels positively celestial.
The Broods EP is a cohesive set of intimate, featherlight electronic pop gems, brimming with possibility for even more gorgeousness to come from the duo.
With their debut LP due out later this year, Broods just successfully proved why they’re very much one of the Most Anticipated Acts of 2014.
This is not one to be missed.
And if you’re on one of the two coasts, you’re in luck — the duo is making their stateside debut at the end of February.
NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES
02/24 – Bardot – Hollywood, CA
02/27 – Rickshaw Shop – San Francisco, CA
03/02 – Brooklyn Bowl – Brooklyn, NY
03/03 – Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
The Broods EP will be released on February 4. (iTunes)
