“City Walls” is a vocal outcry that strikes you to your core. He has a hum that’s terrifyingly beautiful. This is singing that doesn’t just carry the melody but carries the mood, and some scars buried beneath it as well; if you’re going to write a banger about falling in love at first glance under an unforgiving streetlight, outside a club on a cold night, it should have this sort of deeply human bite.
Written by Darius Keeler and Lisa Mottram, “City Walls” is a delicate closeness between the band’s moody trip-hop textures and melodic openness that feels almost breakable. “City Walls” set a brooding foundation for Keeler’s piano and keyboards, while the rest of the band, Danny Griffiths on keyboards, Dave Pen on vocals and guitar, Lisa Mottram on vocals and Jimmy Collins on vocals, fills in with the details that are by turns expansive and intimate.
The production, by Archive and Jerome Devoise, keeps everything both cool and smooth. It’s a song that sounds polished, everything seems to be thoughtfully placed, as in a scene you can’t get out of your head from a movie. “City Walls” is a mood in which you soak yourself in. And once you have gotten in, it’s hard to get back out.
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