Free Love is the latest manifestation of Scottish duo Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook (FKA Happy Meals) – a continuation of their utopian dance pop experiments previously released on Night School Records and Optimo. Today marks their first highly anticipated, self-released EP under Free Love, ‘Luxury Hits’, sharing a full stream of the release plus limited run of vinyl. The new EP arrives at the start of their string of headline shows across the UK & Ireland and follows the announcement of their performance at Eurosonic. Hit play and make yourself familiar with the story behind each synth-laden track below. Fans of glittering disco delights Blue Hawaii, Nite Jewel, and Chromatics will be more than satisfied.
Et Avant
“We started this recording late at night one time when I couldn’t sleep and found a website where you can watch live webcams from around the world. We sat and watched someone learn to surf in Sydney harbour and recorded this at the same time. It’s also a little dream version of the last track on the record, (Et Encore).”
Tomorrow Could Be Heaven
“The world we grew up in – all its hopes and promises are dying very fast. We can sit by its bedside and cry about that and wish things stayed the same, or we can realise how hypocritical, damaging, unequal and misguided it really was – push it over the edge and start building something closer to what we promised each other.”
Synchronicity
“This is a song about the cosmic intervals, coincidences, synchronicities and emergences that have become too vivid in our own lives to ignore. We started writing it on the island of Eigg. We recorded a faster version of this and a slower version before we got it Goldilocks.”
How Do You Feel
“This song is about the faces we put on to other people and how it ultimately leads to us losing ourselves. It’s the fastest song we’ve ever done I think? I feel like we write a lot of music around about 105 bpm (which is my favourite) so good to turn it up a little bit.”
Dépêche Toi
“‘Is it me that makes my life turn or does my life turn itself?’ It’s about the feeling of never being finished – always looking ahead and forgetting about enjoying the moment. It’s not a good way to live but sometimes it happens.”
Playing As Punks
“How long do you bang your head against a wall before it becomes a way of life? Sometimes I want to round up all of our friends and say ‘fuck it, do you want to go somewhere else? Do you want to do it all differently? Let’s just go.’ but I also like going to Dumpling Monkey in Glasgow when we can afford it and would we still get wifi out there wherever we went to? I don’t really know how to do anything other than what I do already. This is the most ‘pop’ song on the record but also a moment of crisis.”
Pushing Too Hard
“We played this live for a long time before settling on a recording to release – there’s an earlier version of this with a different bassline (which I also like) that’s on a live session video we did for NTS at the Green Door Studio. One of our friends pointed out that there’s a Patrick Cowley song with the same name (a cover of a song by The Seeds) which we didn’t realise but Cowley definitely influenced our production on this track.”
Et Encore
“The cathartic resolve: It’s ME that turns the key that you need. A moment of clarity.”
Grab yourself ‘Luxury Hits’ on vinyl here
Live
November
18th – Brave Exhibition Festival, Newcastle
21st – Whelans, Dublin
22nd – The Menagerie, Belfast
29th – Folklore, London
30th – The Peer Hat, Manchester
December
2nd – The Poetry Club, Glasgow
13th – Winter Camp Festival, Paris
31st – Hogmanay, Edinburgh with Metronomy & Franz Ferdinand
January
16th – 19th – Eurosonic, Groningen
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