Jake Back appeared on BlackPlastic.co.uk last summer with the dubby, dark cacophony that was his disco infused workout, Lemme Tell You. Here some 14-months later, Back has teamed up with Nextlife to produce something quite different. Where Lemme Tell You was all about creating a feeling to get lost in, and potentially find connection through, new single Lose The Feeling is a more cerebral affair.
Opening with layered percussion and pillowy synth tones, the instrumentation falls back for a vocal that gently marinades in its own uncertainty. As the lyrics carefully lays out the individual components of a heart that is at the mid-point of breaking, depicting a growing sense of unease and uncertainty. Even if they reach an eruption, relationships never end in one moment, but through a series of small adjustments in how the participants view their futures. It’s this slow-moving demise through misalignment that Lose The Feeling so beautifully captures.
Much of the atmosphere Jake Back and Nextlife create here comes from the growing interplay between the vocals and instrumentation. As the song builds towards its central question, the lyrics are gradually wrapped up in abstract vocal harmonies and layered synths. Left sounding genuinely alone, the song ends with that question, ‘When did we both lose that feeling?’, to which there can be no satisfying answer.
The soft electronic mourning on display on Lose The Feeling reminds me of a song I haven’t revisited in years — 2011’s What I’ve Lost by Benoit & Sergio. Sung to a potential love interest, the magic of What I’ve Lost is how much it is about the hurt the past can still conjure in us. Both Benoit & Sergio, and Jack Back & Nextlife, have captured and bottled the sort of emotional experience that ultimate shapes who we become, for better or worse.