“You’ll Always Be What’s Her Name” (The Bodies Obtained song)

The nighmarish tonal drifts, warping and bends in “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” by The Bodies Obtained from the beginning sets a darkly surreal mood. Especially the cutting, swelling flares of synth, clearly distorted to give it a discordant quality that tears into the downtempo mood established by the rhythm. But even that rhythm fractures and stumbles and reasserts itself and flows with the sounds seemingly dropped into the track like samples without an anchoring context like the melodiously wordless vocals. Like a trip hop song comprised of freely associated sampling, like a DJ Shadow song with a cyberpunk aesthetic. No actual human now could know but it’s like the band has created the experience of jacking into a neural network right out of a William Gibson novel but instead of a smooth experience you got into a feed with a crumbling and inconsistent connection and being routed in not random but intermittent bits of information. And yet in the end it all works out for a chill track that is simultaneously fascinatingly and beautifully unsettling. Which could be said of all the songs from the new The Bodies Obtained album Until I Crawl Away which dropped on November 10, 2023. Listen to “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” on Spotify and follow the duo at the links below.