Slated for a March 1, 2024 release through Heavenly Recordings, Mildlife‘s highly-anticipated third album Chorus is reportedly their most optimistic effort, serving as a sonic testament to their unwavering adoration for 70s psychedelic and comic sounds. But delve deeper, and you will hear references to Polish jazz, Italo disco and a sprinkling of contemporary electronic sounds. The album is the dance of an endlessly expanding and contracting universe — its groove is forever and always, cyclical and evolving. During its most human moments, the album’s material luxuriates in the velvety embrace of Tom Shanahan’s bass lines, Adam Halliwell’s luminous guitar riffs, Kevin McDowell’s hushed and alluring vocals, Jim Rindfleish’s intricate percussive tapestries and the spiritual rhythms of regular collaborator Craig Shanahan. Swept up in the chorus, the lines between individual and ensemble blur.
“It’s knowing that all the pieces of our own puzzles can slot neatly into a bigger one,” the band’s Tom Shanahan says. The album sees the members assurance growing — both individually and as a band. On their previously released material, Kevin McDowell was the primarily vocalist but Chorus sees each member having a moment of expression, highlighting their own choral visions, while forging a new unified openness and humanity to their sound.
“We had this idea that we wanted to create a kind of disparate ecosystem of living things,” the band’s Tom Shanahan continues. “We liked the idea of creating a small metaphor of moving through space. You see moments of things and sounds that may not emerge again, until everything around you starts to unify.”
The album sees the members of Mildlife thematically linking microcosmic personal meaning with a macro view from on high. “Chorus is about a coming together of disparate elements. Not in some sort of utopian aesthetic where everything works perfectly, but in the natural flow and state of things,” shares the band’s Jim Rindfleish. “It’s about cosmic compatibility and chemistry: what makes things work? Not just what makes the band work, but what makes good music, art or love? It’s the rhythm of nature”.
Last year, I wrote about Chorus‘ two previously released singles:
- “Return to Centaurus,” was the acclaimed Aussie outfits first bit of new material since 2020’s Automatic and first single off the forthcoming album. Clocking in at a little over 10 minutes, “Return to Centaurus” opens with droning synths and leads into Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd-meets-space rock-like introduction, with Kraftwerk-like vocoders. By around the 2:40 mark, the song quickly morphs into some hook-driven acid funk with loping yet supple bass lines, shimmering funk guitar riffs, glistening space-age synths, bursts of fluttery flute and intricate yet propulsive drum patterns. Rooted in the Aussie outfit’s love of 70s psychedelic and cosmic sounds, the new single serves as a reminder of their seemingly effortless mastery of mind-bending and unhurried trippy grooves.
- “Musica,” a track built around a groove that’s one-part motorik, one-part glittery Giorgio Moroder-era Italo disco paired with squiggling, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, glistening synths and a supple bass line paired with McDowell’s hushed, gently vocodered vocal and propulsive congo-driven percussion with a spacey, Wish You Were Here-like synth solo. While seeing the band further cement their retro-futuristic sound, “Musica” reminds the listener — both new and familiar — that the Aussie outfit are modern masters of trippy, mind-bending grooves that draw from and effortlessly mesh elements of funk, jazz fusion, prog rock, komische musik and more.
Chorus’ third and final pre-release single “Yourself” is a slinky yacht rock-meets-funky jazz fusion bop that sounds — to my ears, at least — as though it could have been a B-side to Hall and Oates‘ “I Can’t Go For That (Say No Go)” or on Jaco Pastorius‘ self-titled debut. Thematically, the song is about radical and meaningful self-acceptance and the joy to be found in shared purpose. It’s arguably one of the most uplifting and optimistic songs of the Aussie outfit’s growing catalog.
“’Yourself’ is emotionally very positive, uplifting and bright; especially the chorus has this uplifting ascension in the chords,” the band’s Kevin McDowell explains. “I remember sitting on that and feeling like we were all happy. I think we’d maybe matured to the point where these are the kind of brighter sounds that we probably should embrace just out of a sense of freshness, and even just for our own curiosity.”