This Is All Yours, the follow-up to Alt-J’s Mercury Prize winning debut An Awesome Wave, is already one of the year’s most anticipated albums, and with the latest track lifted from the sophomore LP – described by the trio as “the least Alt-J song ever” – our appetites have been whetted even further for the September release.
Following on from the brooding, Miley Cryus-sampling ‘Hunger of the Pine’, the British group have shared ‘Left Hand Free’, a song that frontman Joe Newman explains was whipped up in 20 minutes around a “joke riff” in order to appease their US label, in an interview with The Guardian.
“I can imagine it appealing to American truckers with Good Riddance To Bin Laden stickers,” says the frontman, with keys player Gus Unger-Hamilton concerned that “someone’s going to walk onstage to it at an NRA convention.” Drummer Thom Green adds: “I tried to make the drums as cliched as possible, there’s none of my personality in it.”
Knowing that ‘Left Hand Free’ is a piss-take – its growling blues guitars aping The Black Keys, its organ dabbles jokingly dotted – doesn’t strip away any of the swagger or appeal of the track. Even Newman’s non-sensical come-on of “N-E-O, O-M-G, gee whiz girl you’re the one for me“, is as silly as it is a indicative off the band’s off-kilter delivery of traditional indie rock elements.
If this is the sound of Alt-J selling out, it strangely suits them.
