A number of years back Brooklyn’s Tanlines came out with a brilliant single for The Fader magazine called “SAW” which immediately caught bloggish attention and had me scrambling throughout the Internets for more of whatever material they had. Soon after, they released an EP titled “Settings” on True Panther. Although they had a similar “tone” as Memory Tapes, Washed Out, and Toro Y Moi, Tanlines‘ sounds were less bedroom DIY and had a more polished, big 80s electronic pop sound, with a slight tropical twist.
With this flurry of activity and really solid output, it seemed like Tanlines was well-positioned to be a juggernaut.
But, they took a step back. One of the members worked on a collaboration called Restless People which kept playing with the tropical aspects but ramped up the BPMs a bit. It was a fun and welcome teaser, but for anyone wanting and expecting more Tanlines, (read: this guy) it just built more anticipation. However, like all good tanlines at the end of the summer, they began to retreat and fade.
I followed them on Twitter in hopes of news. Through thousands of super entertaining tweets about basketball, New York, and jokes about napkins in jacket pockets, in January, Tanlines released their first new track “Brothers.” This followed by news of a new full-length record in March called “Mixed Emotions.” Then, this past Saturday, they gave me the opportunity to PREMIERE their next single, “All of Me” on my show Saturday night. And today you can stream it over and over to your hearts content…leave the sunscreen at home because you’re gonna want these.
Stream “All of Me” by Tanlines below.
Before releasing new music into the world, they recognized that in this music making climate people (like me) probably expected an accelerated microwave version of the tried and true single/ep/full-length/worldtour/full-length formula. They sincerely addressed it by saying, “There’s a lot of pressure in record biz today to emerge “fully formed”. we didn’t do that. we grew up in public, like actual human beings do” and “There were times that I wished we had finished the album earlier, would have made some things easier, but I think we really needed that time”. To me, that is is bold, honest, and totally endearing — making it all worth the wait.
— Mario Cotto