Welsh art-pop outfit HMS Morris dive headfirst into 80s excess on ‘Launderette’, featuring Bright Light Bright Light. The third single from their forthcoming fourth album, Saci Hacs, out October 30, imagines an era of financial excess where someone is always waiting in the wings to clean up the mess — for the right price.
The decade is all over the music. Glossy synth pads dominate the arrangement, backed by driving bass through the verses and distinctly 80s-sounding drums. Occasional bursts of wonderfully over-the-top, flashy guitar push things even further into the excess, while Heledd’s slightly conversational vocal balances a frenetic edge with a sultry cool. It’s bright, insistent synth-pop with new-wave running right through it.
Bright Light Bright Light’s Rod Thomas makes an excellent Launderette Man, his sinister delivery providing a delicious contrast to Heledd as the pair meet for a theatrical middle-eight duet. It’s here that the song’s playful concept really comes alive, turning financial greed and moral compromise into something knowingly ridiculous and irresistibly catchy. ‘Launderette’ embraces the biggest, glossiest parts of the 80s aesthetic — dirty laundry and all.
