Son Lux Release New Single "Don't Say It's Too Late" From New EP 'Risk of Make Believe' out January 17 via City Slang
SON LUX
SHARE NEW SINGLE
FROM FORTHCOMING NEW EP
RISK OF MAKE BELIEVE
OUT JANUARY 17, 2025 VIA CITY SLANG
Photo credit Alex Kozobolis
Son Lux, the band of composers enlisted to score 2023’s genre-defying Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All At Once, is back with their first release of new music since their prismatic 49-track soundtrack. Risk Of Make Believe, out January 17th, is a new EP that encapsulates what made the experimental rock trio a perfect fit for the film: an unlikely alchemy of beguiling sounds and heart-on-sleeve passion. It is further evidence of Son Lux's wild creativity, voracious appetite for experimentation, and ability to distill seemingly disparate universes of sound into a signature unmistakably their own.
“Don’t Say It’s Too Late,” the EP’s second single, features Grammy Award-winning arranger and string player Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Paul Simon, John Legend, yMusic). The interplay between Lott’s voice, electronics, and strings creates a sweeping winter ballad balancing longing and loss, precariously reaching for the hope of reconciliation. The track is out today and can be heard HERE.
Patience and ease pervade the EP’s title track, “Risk Of Make Believe.” The song begins with what sounds like drums through a vocoder up in the choir loft. Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia join with a precise but pliant groove, drums and bass moving together as if in slow motion. What unfolds is an unhurried song that never feels restless in its gradual evolution. Ryan Lott sings, “What’s the risk of make believe?” weaving a plea to give oneself permission to change through tessellations of crystallizing guitar.
More traditional tracks give way to a pair of slowly unfurling songs on the meditative back half of the EP. Fans of the band will recognize the minimal, repeated refrains as a return to Son Lux’s roots. “Cocoon” holds space for metamorphosis over seven minutes, its spare, cyclical form belying a steady, relentless revolution. Detuned Tunis drums and prepared guitars shed like a chrysalis from around a choir of Lott’s evolving vocals, propelled by Chang and Bhatia’s sinewy rhythm section sensibility.
The EP closes with “Take Your Time With Me,” a slow-burn anthem that showcases the band's ability to reconcile hooky pop and thrilling experimentation. Spacious clearings of sound give way to technicolor thickets, with Chang’s drumming thrillingly pitting splatter-paint abstraction against nod-inducing viscerality. The EP leaves us right where we began—imagining and longing for whatever reinvention might follow.
Album art by Andrea Hyde
Tracklist
HaikuRisk Of Make BelieveDon’t Say It’s Too LateCocoonTake Your Time With Me
Acclaim for Son Lux:
“Exhilaratingly unpredictable at every turn.” – Consequence of Sound
“One of the most important bands in contemporary music.” – Under the Radar Mag
On Everything Everywhere All At Once:
“Every bit as chaotic and ambitious as the plot of Everything Everywhere All At Once, Son Lux’s soundtrack is an audacious, exploratory collection of songs.” – The Vinyl Factory
“Son Lux’s score is a remarkable juggling act that oscillates from ominous to awe-inspiring and back again, with a few playful digressions along the way.” – Indiewire
On Tomorrows:
“Embraces chaos with an audacious range and unremitting sincerity.” – Pitchfork
“A three-part series of austere beauty, white light and black rock, rooted in layers of haunting electro-acoustic samples.” – Composer Magazine
