“Hot Friend”, the latest single from SMILE, was released on February 12. It took a few days to find me, but once it did it was all I wanted to listen to. It sounds like it was custom assembled by a team of scientists for me specifically. Vicious, abrasive noise erupting into a noir-ish groove. Singer Rubee True Fegan’s spoken vocal is by turns sultry and edgy, building to an anxious repetition of “I should be happy / But I’m not too pleased about it”. The video looks like it was assembled using extra footage from a low-budget Blumhouse film.
Days of “Hot Friend” on repeat before it occurred to me to look into their catalogue.
Then:
SMILE’s been at it since 2022, and their debut album Price of Progress dropped in 2023. Price of Progress is a captivating and original record, using a gritty, modern post-punk sound as a launching point for something unique and feral. It kicks off with “Dog In the Manger”, which pulls the same levers as “Hot Friend”—vicious noise and noir vibes, but with more bite—but as the record goes on, both Fegan’s vocal and the band’s sound are more dynamic and weird than the band you might be thinking of.
Check out “Stalemate”, which feels more Talking Heads than Dry Cleaning:
That record has a good origin story, courtesy of this profile in Byte.fm:
…singer and lyricist Rubee True Fegan from Albuquerque (New Mexico), who had actually been studying in Germany for several years but was stranded in Bonn-Alfter on a scholarship, was stuck in her old homeland of the USA due to the pandemic. The rest of the band (drummer Marius Szarnych, guitarists Lars Fritzsche and Sebastian Lessel, and bassist Max Schmidt), however, had remained in Germany. Out of necessity, the songwriting was split up: Rubee was to write the lyrics and the men the music.
And the lyrics! If Fegan wasn’t putting this stuff to music, she’d be a hell of a short story writer. “Produce” starts with a trip to the grocery store and ends like something from William S. Burroughs:
There’s a lot more to like on that record – it’s strangely danceable, with delicious tension and unpredictability. “Protection” goes for 90s radio pop, until it gets weird:
SMILE has announced some shows in France in April — no news on whether there are more singles to come, but I’m sure that’s the case.
