Milky Chance - Living In A Haze (Ltd. Ed. Ocean Blue Vinyl)

As Milky Chance prepare to share the idiosyncratic and inventive alt-pop songs that populate their new album Living In A Haze, they proudly boast over 10 million monthly Spotify listeners, an enviable touring resume (including stops at Coachella and Lollapalooza), and an upcoming schedule of world-trotting 2023 dates featuring the biggest shows of their career. Over the past decade, they've proven themselves to be, in their own low-key way, one of the biggest bands in the world. Their runaway hit debut "Stolen Dance" - which recently surpassed over 1 billion streams on Spotify - gifted Rehbein and Dausch with a platform far beyond what the duo could have imagined. They capitalized on that momentum with their 2014 debut Sadnecessary, which broke them as a global streaming and touring act, and followed that up with 2017's Blossom and 2019's Mind The Moon, which found them taking advantage of new resources to collaborate with heroes like Jack Johnson and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. On their independent debut Living In A Haze, Milky Chance thrive on writing the tightest, most groove-forward alt-pop songs imaginable - and then going back and distorting each sound into it's wildest iteration. Recorded at Jazzanova Recording Studios in Berlin with production help from DECCO, Jonas Holle, Tobias Kuhn, and Dennis Neuer as well as guest appearances from Fatoumata Diawara and Charlotte Cardin, Living In A Haze applies the band's endless musical curiosity to the propulsive logic of the best club music while delivering masterful songcraft. There are sublime moments throughout: Album opener and lead single "Living In A Haze" is an economical haymaker of a track that unfolds with an enigmatic logic, going from elegiac triplet guitar figure to a tight, post-Strokes rhythmic feel that provides the ideal musical metaphor to accompany Rehbein's dreamy delivery. Afrobeat rhythms power both "Flicker In The Dark" and "Feeling For You" - on the first providing a canvas on which to liberally splatter earthy acoustic textures and a cartoonishly colorful guitar solo, on the second lending a swiveling counterpoint to a narcotized vocal. And on "History Of Yesterday," Milky Chance marry a UKG shuffle with sunny atmospherics and cascades of reverberating piano to propel the band's breeziest chorus to date. Living In A Haze vibrates with possibility and passion - it's a thrilling juncture for band as they look forward to a heavy touring schedule in 2023 and beyond.