Since the release of 2022’s Endless, the Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — have released a growing collection of standalone singles, including the first cover of their history, their take on Talk Talk’s 1984 smash-hit “It’s My Life” and “DREAMCRUSHER.“
The duo’s latest single “Stay Out Of The Basement” sees the duo mischievously blurring the lines between playful fantasy and broodingly eerie undertone, anchored around Bentley’s plaintive Thom Yorke-like delivery ethereally floating over a minimalist production featuring skittering beats and swirling. reverb-soaked, shoegazer-textured synths. The song evokes the simultaneous feeling of snuggling in a warm blanket — but then feeling something grab at your toes.
“‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is the second in a series of songs that started on ukulele—but this one took a left turn. I wrote the original idea, dropped it into Pro Tools, and handed it off to Jordan. Usually, we keep parts of that first take—vocals, lyrics, melodies—but in this case, none of it made the cut.
The original version had solid ideas, but it didn’t fit the new direction. The vibe, the vocal phrasing—it just didn’t connect. So we started fresh. What you hear now is entirely built around Jordan’s instrumental, and the final vocal fits it naturally.
Each song in this series lands somewhere different. Some stay true to the original demo, others evolve into something completely new. ‘Stay Out Of The Basement’ is one of the rare ones that left the ukulele version behind entirely.”
The accompanying visual features the duo performing the song in studio, as reel-to-reel tape machines run.
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