Bob Moses is back. The Canadian duo — Tom Howie and Jimmy Vallance — return Friday (Jan. 14) with “Love Brand New,” the first single from their forthcoming LP, The Silence In Between.
Taking influence from acts as disparate as Nine Inch Nails and Prince, “Love Brand New” is a dark, brooding slow build that pulsates with moody lust, growls power riffs and shows off a heavier sound for the duo. The song was co-written by John Martin and Michel Zitron — the duo famous for co-writing Swedish House Mafia’s “Don’t You Worry Child” — with the four guys meeting in an L.A. studio and coming up with “Love Brand New” in just a few hours.
“John started playing that guitar riff you hear in the intro, and then Michel started singing, and then we all started singing and pitching ideas and that chorus just landed in our lap,” Howie tells Billboard. “The whole vibe of the song is pretty much there in the original demo.”
“It felt natural to have this tough, industrial beat as the foundation for the sweeter melodies and lyrics,” adds Vallance. “We’re both big Nine Inch Nails fans, and the beginning of ‘Closer’ was definitely an influence for the production. We were also listening to a lot of Gesaffelstein at the time, and were influenced by how Prince would put these funky guitar riffs over drum machines. We were really swinging for the fences on this record, felt like we had a big beat, a big melody and didn’t want to shy away from any of it.”
This big track also comes with a big music video, which is premiering exclusively below on Billboard. For the clip, Bob Moses collaborated with Montreal-based director Adrian Villagomez, who intersperses footage of the band with multiple narratives about the many kinds of love — and the infinite challenges of love. The video’s warehouse setting is an homage to the spaces where Bob Moses cut their teeth performing.
Years after the release of their 2015 debut album All In All, the duo — who are managed by Geoff Barnett at Red Light Management — found themselves in uncharted creative territory while making music during the pandemic.
“We had no idea what the future would hold, if we’d still be able to tour, when we would be able to release another record,” Vallance tells Billboard. “There was a lot of fear and uncertainty, but from that came this feeling of not wanting to hold back creatively. It’s now or never. This is our story from when the world locked down to the rebirth happening now: the silence in between those moments. All of that fear, longing, uncertainty, and ultimately hope was poured into our lyrics.”
The album, the third studio LP from Bob Moses, will drop via Astralwerks on March 14. The duo will then embark on a tour behind this release.
