Remember how awesome this band was? By all indications, they continue to be, well, pretty awesome. Last month, New York City dance-punk outfit The Rapture announced the Sept. 6 release of In the Grace of Your Love, their first studio album since 2006’s Pieces of the People We Love, via DFA. Now, they’ve graced In the Grace with a cover (left), and the rest of us with a tour that includes a stop at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Aug. 20.
Check out those new dates, along with an uneventful DIY video of the album’s lead single, “How Deep Is Your Love?” at the band’s website.
The track itself employs the classic James Murphy one-piece-at-a-time construction: first the piano riff, then four-to-the-floor bass, Luke Jenner’s quavering vocal, and finally, buzzy synths, hand claps, tambourine and cowbell.
But it’s the bait-and-switch they pull halfway through “How Deep Is Your Love?” that sets the track apart, peeling everything back for a moment to introduce some seriously muscular saxophone riffs that weave in and out of Jenner’s titular refrain and chants of “Hallelujah.”
There’s no irony here, none of the Gang of Four punk that these guys were doing better than everyone else in 2003: just an eminently danceable house groove, made epic over six minutes of build-and-release.
The band has not yet listed the MHoW date on their tour, and tickets are not yet on sale. But it’s a good bet, if recent DFA one-offs are any indication, that they will be snapped up, and quickly.
