New Music: Shook – Mind Up

It’s been a while since we’ve showcased music from Shook, back in May last year in fact. With a new album called Music for City and Nature on the way, and they’ve dropped the delicious Mind Up as a teaser – check out the cute video below.

There’s a lightness to the song that can’t help but entrance the listener. Though modern in tone, with its electronic take on dreampop and a wryness you hear in the music of Metronomy, Belle & Sebastian, and Saint Etienne, it has a very old-fashioned charm about it.

Light, fresh but with a serious undertone, it has a curiously cinematic air – not expansive and dramatic, but more intimate and fun, like a 60s Technicolor farce. The vocals have a quietly insistent and playful ambience to them, the arrangement just overflows with hooks and the chorus is witty and rather engaging, even as puts the protagonist in a bit of a existential quandry.

Shook had this to say about the song: “Mind Up was created as an entry in a diary. It’s the feeling of being stuck in the chaos of your own mind. Where you have to get things done, but somehow you cannot get anything done, and you feel like everything is against you. It’s about the feeling of being trapped inside your own chaotic mind and trying to cope with it. Sometimes I just wish I could escape this chaos, but it’s often not possible. We are surrounded by chaos in everyday life. Especially when you live in the busy City. At times like this, I just have to embrace the chaos. Use this chaos to fuel creativity and use it as a positive force instead of something negative.”

Mind Up is out now, and you can get information on how to stream and download the song here.  You can pre-order  the album on Bandcamp, including a vinyl version. Keep an eye on Shook’s Facebook and Instagram feeds for  news about new music, upcoming live dates and projects, and much more.