Well, better late than never, I guess, but Malcolm Mask McLaren dropped this sucker more than a week ago now, and I’m just now getting around to it and I apologize, I really do, but trust me it’s worth the wait unless you’re ahead of me and scoffing, which is your right, but also shut up, let’s enjoy this together.

What was dropped? The official audio (in pieces) and what I presume to be MV clips (also pieces!) of the upcoming … actually, I’m not sure what you’d call this, and if it even has a title. The YouTube description calls it an EP, but it’s just the two songs and ah hell why do I bother. Two songs, effectively a digest, for a release that I don’t completely understand but seems to be coming on the 20th.

Anyway, because this is two things making one thing, but the one thing is all we have for now and this presumably will end as one thing made out of two things, and yet here we are in the present with the one thing being more like two things glued together for the sake of expedience, let’s treat the two songs as separate entities and talk about them like they don’t know each other even though they’re next to each other!

Darlin’

I– This is an absolute delight! I don’t mean to offend or otherwise suggest anything less than fully supportive of the group, but I’d gotten so used to a standard easycore-lite approach to MMM’s material over the past … long time that I didn’t know if they genuinely had any double-spit-take-call-your-friends moves in them. But this is it, man! Holy crap. Do I like it so much because the members are singing it well? Is it the composition? Everything at once? I don’t know, but I never pause a song to write about it*, and I stopped this and am writing really flippin’ fast so that I can go press play again and not feel like I left any thoughts out on the table. Paired up with the video clip, it’s so damn joyful — I may have gotten into idol in the first place because of the creative atom smashing of loudrock and, you know, idols, but I stayed for the pure joy that it can communicate. This is it. Is it an Of The Year contender? My heart says so.

the power of …

Oh for the love of god, they did it again? That intro definitely had me, see: easycore lite, above. But maybe composer-san finally found that sweet spot between the “Like This Sneakers” side of MMM and what you can really accomplish with idol vocalists and rock sounds, especially if those rock sounds sort of finish the thought that began with what contemporaneously suggested a “lite” on “easycore” but in this case full realizes it? That’s what this sounds like. The clip is very short and the video may as well not exist, but: Yes.

I almost hate to say it, gang, and it’s way late in the year and in some cases many months removed from good stuff earlier in the year, and even more so this is just clips of full songs and not the full songs nor the full release, but: This might be my favorite short release of the year, single or EP or whatever the hell they’re calling it.

And with that said! It’s just about time for Best Of nominations. Expect to hear more like really soon!

*Most of it’s mundane, so why not blog the post while the song does its predictable things and save yourself a couple of minutes?