New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Yearning, Pop Gem “This Is The Last Time”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

• Stars‘ Torquil Campbell 
• Young Galaxy‘s Stephen Ramsey
• English studio genius and synth player Tom McFall, whose engineering credits include R.E.M., Bloc Party, Twin Shadow and Regina Spektor 

Over the past 18 months or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” “Horizontal Rain” and “Beaten to Write.” Their latest single “This Is The Last Time” is glistening sophistipop-meets-80s New Wave-meets New Order-like tune anchored around what may arguably be the most melodic and the most earnest and achingly oversized yearning song of the trio’s growing catalog.

Sonically, “This Is The Last Time” sees the JOVM mainstays looking backward to move forward. Campbell, Ramsey and McFall have had a long-held obsession with late 1980s and early 1990s electronic music, and the new single pushes that fixation towards its biggest pop-leaning instincts. There aren’t software shortcuts hiding beneath the surface either. “No plug-ins, anywhere. This track is all analog, baby.”

When asked what inspired it, Total Fucking Darkness’ Stephen Ramsey offers a characteristically economic answer, “New Order.”

“This Is The Last Time” arrived with similarly little ceremony. Ramsay had barely made it through the instrumental once before Torquil Campbell had the lyrics ready. “It may as well be called ‘Real Time’ because Torq wrote this in real time,” Ramsay explains. “By the time I played him the instrumental once, he had written the lyrics.”

“‘This Is The Last Time” is about the point where letting go becomes forward motion, following whatever dream remains, committing to it completely, and accepting that the only sensible response to uncertainty is to set your heart on fire — and see what survives.

“Every band says their latest music is the best thing they’ve ever done,”the band’s Stephen Ramsay says. “It’s obviously cliché at this point and therefore categorically untrue in almost all cases, but I’m telling you, this is the best song we’ve written.”

The accompanying video features edited footage from some movie that follows two dogs, who are in love. It’s adorable.

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