The Unicorn in the Room

The question everyone was halfheartedly asking in 2010—when will this electronic sound finally burn itself out, and what comes next—was never going to resolve on anyone’s schedule. Genres don’t announce their retirement. They get quieter, get absorbed into the next wave, leave behind a few records that aged well and a larger pile that didn’t. Chew Lips, a London three-piece that coalesced properly in early 2008, felt like one of the ones that might age well.

Tigs fronts the group—vocals, presence, the slightly imperious quality of a performer who knows exactly why you’re watching her—alongside Will Sanderson and James Watkins. What they make together sounds like someone drew a Venn diagram between Metric, Uh Huh Her, and the Ting Tings, then handed the overlap to people who grew up loving Prince and LCD Soundsystem. The combination should be messy. It isn’t. It has that quality of passionate indifference—music that doesn’t seem to care whether you follow it, which makes you want to follow it everywhere.

Their debut Unicorn dropped in January 2010, and for a record that sounded like warm weather it arrived at exactly the wrong time of year, which was probably intentional. You play that kind of music in winter to create a debt the summer eventually repays. By the time festival season arrived, Chew Lips had exactly the right songs for a field full of people who’d been waiting for the sun since February.

Meanwhile, the Ting Tings were supposedly staging a comeback around the same time, and I was waiting for it the way you wait for a bus that keeps almost appearing. Katie White and Jules De Martino had made one record that was genuinely perfect for what it was—not ambitious, not deep, just exactly what it was—and then went very quiet. Some bands owe you a second act. I was still hoping.