‘right now’, the latest single from Seattle’s arms around the world, is a stretch of empty highway after midnight, the dashboard glowing and the radio turned just a little too loud.
The first thing you notice is the guitar, and it’s a wonderful, slightly unruly thing. It doesn’t shimmer so much as scrape, a vintage tone with grit under its fingernails that keeps leaning forward as though the song might tip over if it ever stopped. There’s a Bowie-in-Berlin chill to it, all cold neon and clenched jaw, but it’s never cold in a way that keeps you out. It pulls you closer instead.
Then the voices arrive, and the whole thing changes temperature. Harmonies folded gently around it, sounds like a window opening in a locked room. It’s soft and a little hazy, almost like remembering a dream while you’re still inside it. That tug-of-war between the abrasive and the beautiful is where the song lives, and it’s the moment I kept rewinding to, because it feels so honestly human.
The repetition could have been a risk, but here it works like a heartbeat. By the third or fourth pass, the lines stop being words and start being a feeling, urgent and a little aching, the sound of wanting something you can’t quite name.
If this is the opening statement, connection looks set to be a special one. Recorded largely live between Seattle and Paris, it promises the thrill of musicians reacting to each other in real time, flaws and all. January 2027 can’t come soon enough.
https://open.spotify.com/track/5izUlsLx0r5oo0oUOkZSbn?si=46417fb5ba934751