Tanlines Try Out Guitar-Pop With “Invisible Ways”

The product of week-long session messing around in singer Eric’s childhood home.

March 30, 2015

Early in 2013, Brooklyn duo Tanlines spent a long, cold week is Pittsburgh. They posted up in the childhood home of vocalist Eric Emm with plans to get to work on Highlights, their long-awaited sophomore full-length. New song "Invisible Ways" comes from those basement sessions, and unlike the rhythmically cheerful synth-pop heard on their 2012 debut, it's basically just a wistful rock song: rich, bruised, melodically tight.

"We had a lot of conversations about whether it 'sounded enough like Tanlines,'" drummer Jesse Cohen writes of the stripped-down track, which apparently came to the duo fully-formed—like magic—after a series of technical difficulties that left them without their usual catalog of digital samples and effects. "It was the only thing that happened that week that felt really good. The final version remains incredibly true to our original recording." Highlights drops May 19th via True Panther.

Lead image: Columbine Goldsmith

Tanlines Try Out Guitar-Pop With “Invisible Ways”