Cults: "Go Outside"

Sorry I missed you guys yesterday. My last quarter of grad school just started so Tuesdays may be a little sketchy. Be sure to check in regularly though, we post at least four times a week! Today, Juke Box Hero to the rescue with a killer track by Cults.

It’s pop as PSA. This song from the two-year-old, Manhattan-based, guy-girl project Cults must remind many of their mothers insisting they get out of the house. "It’s too nice a day to spend inside (watching TV, playing video games – pick your ass-growing poison)," is pretty much the language I remember hearing on repeat. Now, stuck inside an office while the weather’s beautiful (it’s not, but hypothetically), there’s nothing most of us would like more than "to go outside and make it light all day."

Whimsical glockenspiel cutting through a simple, loping bass line, with basic percussion and far-out happy-go-lucky vocals from Madeline Follin (Deschanel on Vicodin?), all makes for a concentrated dose of Vitamin D: sunlight-induced endorphins delivered directly through the ears. Though not the most complex or technically impressive arrangement, it sticks in your head like Velcro. The steady-jam groove is a perfect head-bobber and a reminder that good music doesn’t have to be overly thought out.

Of course, the second-level message is more about attitude than weather, about being open rather than closed, up instead of down, et al. But interestingly, Follin isn’t asking or even telling the song’s object to come along outside or share her outlook. She’s more explanatory and observational: I want to go outside, you want to stay inside/If that’s how it’s going to be, then roll over and let me through. She’s saying they’re (read: we’re) each responsible for their own happiness. There’s an implication that joining her will be far better than the alternative, but the ball’s not in her court.

The song generally works for me – I’m pretty close to following her on whatever level she prefers – but I was left salivating for a few more choruses once the band of dirty hippies starts to let it rip around the 2:55 mark. There’s nothing more uplifting than a song that starts with glock, swells with dreamy ’60s guitar and vocals to an unbridled sonic boil-over, then retreats to the initial coy pop-glimmer. Cults just need a little less bridle.