Two Blood Moons Over Caracal

Magnets belongs to Disclosure more than it belongs to Lorde. Worth saying upfront, because the track sits inside Caracal—Guy and Howard Lawrence’s 2015 follow-up to Settle—and it moves the way Disclosure records move: cool-surfaced, rhythmically exact, the kind of thing that sounds effortless and isn’t. Lorde’s contribution is atmospheric rather than performative, a smear of melancholy across an otherwise clean production. There’s no middle position on her: either the particular fogginess she’s been operating in since Pure Heroine—Royals, Tennis Court, Team—does something to a listener, or they’re watching from across the room wondering what everyone else is hearing.

The video doubles down on that atmosphere: Lorde moving through a landscape under two simultaneous blood moons, which is exactly the kind of image she would commission and exactly the kind of image that either lands or it doesn’t. No middle ground there either.

I’m in. Have been since the beginning. Caracal is worth your time as a whole, and Magnets is one of its better moments—not the most immediate track on the album, but one that reveals more with each listen than the more polished singles manage.