Ten years have passed since Norway’s The Uptights’ debut cassette first surfaced online. The sad and eerie tape sounded like little else, owing as much to books and old radio/TV vignettes as to indie guitar music.
Now Oslo’s unsung lo-fi heroes are back. “IIFTTTLT” is the second single and title track from their new album, It Is For Them That The Lights Twinkle, out June 25 through Keepsecretrecords.
New Noise are proud to premiere “IIFTTTLT” below:
On their new single, The Uptights clean up their act. “IIFTTTLT” is a dark ballad with vocals drenched in reverb and a blisteringly loud guitar solo at the end. Like all ten tracks on the album, the single was recorded to cassette sometime between 2012 and 2016, mixed in mono and mastered by Christian Obermayer.
On the release of “IIFTTTLT,” The Uptights state:
“I can’t remember exactly when we recorded this one, probably in 2013 or 2014. It’s a song about having done something wrong and disappearing into the night.
It’s also the title track from our album, which takes its name from a paragraph in Lewis Mumford’s book The Culture of Cities (1938), describing how the lights of adverts and cinemas twinkle at the crowds at night.
Musically, two things are worth mentioning: Drummer Øyvind played bass, and guitarist Andreas played drums. The chorus was inspired by the verse on Never Hurt You by The Telescopes.”
Preorder and stream It Is For Them That The Lights Twinkle here.
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