Music
Mike Skinner is launching new music on Spotify
And The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light is some of his best music since The Streets. Listen to the lot here.
Mike Skinner hasn’t been quiet, exactly – in the last year or so we’ve seen him turning his hand to direction (see the video to Grim Sickers’ Kane) and presenting Vice’s Don’t Call It Road Rap documentary. But if you weren’t playing close attention, you might assume The Streets man had put the whole music thing on hold for a bit.
That would be wrong. In fact, Skinner has been hard at work – and over the last few months, he’s quietly launched an album’s worth of tracks on Spotify under the name The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light. What’s more it doesn’t have the feel of a side-project. This is dark and melancholy music, drawing sonically on UK drill and rave, and with Skinner’s poetic, half-rapped half-sung delivery front and centre.
Listen in the player below, then read about five of the best below.
Five of the best The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light tracks so far
1. Things You Need To Pattern
Set to a pulsing piano riff and moody drums, this is a tense relationship drama, with the girl that Skinner’s chasing tantalisingly out of reach. “There’s two sorts of girl, those who want power as a girl/And those who want their power to be power in the world…” he declares, before announcing “I am on a madness/But I have to have you bad…”
2. You Get All The Luck When You Don’t Give A Fuck
Set to ticky trap drums and bubbling synths, this paean to carefree living is packed with classic Skinner wit and wisdom. “I will go to the city/I will wear all my wealth/Next time they need an idiot/I will send for myself,” raps Skinner before asking: “If love is the answer/What’s the question I’m stuck?”
3. Your Wave God’s Wave God
Mummy, what’s a Wave God? To the moan and groan of a dubstep bassline, Skinner weaves a wobbly path through a procession of bars, clubs and warehouses, observing – and sometimes leading – the bad behaviour. “Out to the raving crew/Out of your face in the loo/Out going ape to the tune…”
4. Happiest Man Alive
We're transported to an Eastern European drinking den, and Mike is getting twisted with a cast of unusual characters. At times it feels like The Darker The Shadow, The Brighter The Light is an excuse for Skinner to test out some of his best one-liners, and Happiest Man Alive is packed with them. Toss up for the best line – it’s either “The offie is not far up the street/Coffee is not our cup of tea…” or “If you ate a nail, you’d shit a corkscrew.”
5. Let God’s Promise Shine On Your Problems
For all the bad behaviour in his music, Skinner can occasionally turn out a masterful redemption song, and this is one of them. “Goldilocks stuck me up and robbed me of porridge,” rhymes Skinner, but his sadness is lifted up on twinkling piano and pitched-up diva vocals, and hold on, there’s something in our eye.
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