Maybe you’ve seen them of their tiny sun shades on Fallon. Frontwoman Shanny Smart swaying in a skintight black prime, Jackson Walker Lewis plugging away on the keys as a crew of desultory downtown varieties limply smolder within the background: The New York digital duo is performing its dub-house single “I Like It Like That.” It’s quintessential Fcukers: a laid-back, minimalistic thumper that’s a little bit inane and really infectious. The gibberish lyrics (“I inform ’em hit the seashore, hit the bongo/I inform ’em beep-beep ’trigger I wanna go”) hit like Cocomelon for membership youngsters. The primary few instances Smart sings “I prefer it like that,” you’re merely bobbing to the beat. By the twelfth, the phrase begins to really feel slippery and postverbal, like a dialog with the mirror whereas rolling on molly. By the thirty third time, you’re transfixed. Tiny sun shades have now appeared in your face.
Attractive, blasé dancefloor hypnosis has clearly labored for Fcukers. Previously two years, they’ve opened for Justice, Tame Impala, and LCD Soundsystem; DJed for Hedi Slimane at Paris Style Week; and amassed followers like Billie Eilish, Charli XCX, and Julian Casablancas, all off the hype of 2024’s Dishevelled$$ EP. Their first-ever present, at Brooklyn’s Child’s All Proper in 2023, offered out after they solely had one single to their title (the lovelorn home banger “Moms,” uploaded simply hours earlier than the set). By the point they appeared on the cover of NME, they’d launched 4 songs. It appeared all you wanted to learn about Fcukers was that they didn’t have to strive very exhausting to have a great time.
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On Ö, the New York indie sleaze-adjacent group that’s greatest poised to interrupt downtown containment makes an attempt to cement these vibes in music. Accomplished in a two-week blitz with Kenneth Blume (fka Kenny Beats), their debut album stakes out their imaginative and prescient of simple, deadpan cool. Fcukers know their status—membership rats, downtown hedons—and play to it: “In my blond hair, white Nikes/Make the entire membership wanna struggle me,” Smart chants gamely over chintzy horns and sparse drum machines on “Shake It Up.” Flip a method and her languid, deadpan vocals are wondrously dreamy and suggestive, like on Dylan Brady-assisted tracks “L.U.C.Okay.Y” and “Butterflies,” the place membership grime sounds nearly blissfully harmless: breathy whispers filled with shy flirtation, soundtracks for lengthy summer time evenings dancing shut. Flip one other means, although, and Smart’s supply comes out within the dead-eyed, Xanax’d-up model-off-duty drawl of “Beatback.” Right here, she’s not archly trying away; she’s simply not taking a look at you, or something.
Although Fcukers are sometimes lumped with acts like Snow Strippers and the Hellp, the sound of Ö is extra rooted in, say, Groove Armada or Basement Jaxx relatively than the Crystal Castles-indebted electroclash of their friends. The fixation on clubland throughout the pond produces a blended bag. On dub-infused “TTYGF,” it really works: Saint Vincent-born rapper Skiifall’s patois-laced verses soften right into a libidinous swamp of strangled horns and wubby bass, a superb accompaniment to Smart’s icy taunts: “You say you’ll love me until the world ends/Why don’t you simply go/Why don’t you inform it to your girlfriend.” Trippy and pheromonal, the music evokes the three a.m. underbelly of an evening out, when good instances smudge right into a nightmarish haze. “Play Me” is equally entertaining, propelling a drum’n’bass rhythm right into a Triggaman break; Smart’s demented-baby rap is the cherry on prime. However “Lonely” speeds by on generic storage beats, and Smart’s supply is weirdly deflated in comparison with the equally UKG-inspired “Butterflies.” The string-laden downtempo nearer “Really feel the Actual” stands aside, evoking Portishead and Saint Etienne whereas missing its predecessors’ fullness and melancholy. It’s a delicate comedown that leaves a boring hangover.
