Leave it to These New Puritans to get us emotional about construction equipment. The English duo of Essex brothers Jack and George Barnett serve up new album Crooked Wing on May 23 via Domino, and introduce the project’s fifth record with a new collaboration with songwriting genius Caroline Polachek that romanticizes not only the bond we have with machines, but the bonds they have with one another.
The cinematic track is called “Industrial Love Song,” it hit the streams yesterday (March 11), and it’s an atmospheric composition that aches and yearns like the soundtrack to a moody television drama. A dance floor banger, this is not.
“‘Industrial Love Song’ is a duet between two cranes on a building site,” says Jack. “Caroline sings the part of one crane, I sing the other; they can’t touch (their movements are controlled by the operator), but when the sun rises they hope that their shadows will cross… As we exit the mechanical age, you realize how much we have in common with our machines, how human they are. Suddenly it didn’t feel so absurd to write a love song from their perspective.”
George adds that the new track, which debuts as a double-A side single with companion piece “Bells,” is simply “progressive music made with instruments that have been around for hundreds of years.”
The “Industrial Love Song” video was directed by artist and photographer Harley Weir alongside These New Puritans, and it’s worth a watch or two below.