London’s Utopiates will release their hugely anticipated debut album later this year. Starting their party in 2022 Is a new single ‘Devolution’. To date, their remarkable output has been recorded from frontman Dan Popplewell’s bedroom. Now recording at Leeds Nave Studios with producer Andy Hawkins, they have a chance to expand what is, an already colossal sound.
The Utopiates catalogue is available from their Bandcamp page.
Clearly unphased by the step into a more professional arena, they bring their love of house music to the fore. Trippy acid house drums fall and climb alongside a ‘Cannonball’ (Breeders) bassline to lay the foundations for Ed Godshaw’s brilliantly blissful keys.
On previous material, their fine rhythm section has allowed Popplewell’s indie-soul vocals soul to soar and guitarist Josh Redding to find new ways to make John Squire the past. Here, in a Bobby Gillespie show of creativity first, they step back. Popplewell’s ability to refrain gives everything more snap and, crucially, allows for a collective spirit to prosper.
Similarly, Redding’s guitar work has been spiralling psychedelic magic from the rock gods Squire and Hendrix. Barely featuring here, he drops in with enriching hooks to kneed everything together, and then, when you think the archetypal blast is coming, he meanders in like Marr with a feather-light touch.
The Utopiates have a great sense of community as a band. Among their fans and peers, they soak it all in and are there for the ride, not the destination. This single is yet more proof of that. A delicate house number which, live, who knows where they could take it on bigger stages with better light shows. Distinctively theirs it offers avenues for collaboration on remixes. Visions of Graeme Park taken it to Hacienda heights or Jagz Kooner dragging into furious despair, it just has to happen, right?