Alexis Taylor - Wild Horses

Описание: Order/stream Alexis Taylor's new album, Paris In The Spring: https://alexistaylor.lnk.to/parisinth...

Alexis Taylor is one of the UK’s most distinctive singer-songwriters, both individually, and as part of pop giants Hot Chip. A singular voice, he’s built a substantial body of solo work over the years, but his seventh release, Paris In The Spring, feels like his magnum opus. It’s Taylor’s most revealing album yet, peeling back the layers of his psyche to reveal sentiments both specific and universal. The subject matter doesn’t shy away from hard-hitting themes but musically, it’s carefree, brightly-lit and contemporary, drawing on leftfield pop, country, elegant disco-house and Vangelis-inspired soundscapes.

Testament to his skill as a curator, he’s called on some impressive personnel to help create its effervescent sound world; Air’s Nicolas Godin, The Avalanches, Étienne de Crécy, Lola Kirke, Pierre Rousseau (Paradis), Ewan Pearson, Elizabeth White of Pale Blue, Oli Bayston, and Scritti Politti’sGreen Gartside. In this world, the confessional style of country greats is charged by the pop melodicism of Paul McCartney, the futuristic funk of Sly and the Family Stone and, as Taylor puts it, “synthesisers left out in the rain”. It’s where British Americana meets Gallic flair, somewhere on Mars. Is it his cosmic cowboy record? “Well,” he smiles, “the working title was Cocaine, Wild Horses and Real Love.”

The album title references a psychological test where things are not as they seem, and though Taylor is happy to explain his lyrics to some degree, he adds that “you have to look for those double meanings, or what’s hiding under the surface.” Influenced by a master of doing exactly this, David Lynch looms large on the cosmic-country-meets-NYC-garage odyssey ‘Out of Phase’, whose lyrics reference two of the late director’s films. “There are daydreams full of dread sometimes - thankfully not all the time. The mind can be filled, or overloaded, and mystery can be misleading - or leading. And soon you are on a Lost Highway. This is the first song Oli Bayston and I made together, and was a much-needed tonic for carrying on with making this album. This process involved finding incredible musical partners and then sometimes losing them altogether, as life gets in the way - just as much as it was also about losing friends literally to death. But the new musical partners are to be celebrated as much as the death of friends is to be focused upon. Nashville singer Lola Kirke was the missing ingredient in this song - her voice takes a lonely cowboy’s mystery into a modern duet of love, yearning and searching.” An actor, author and musician, Lola Kirke’s film credits include David Fincher’s Gone Girl and Michael B Jordan’s Sinners. Her 2025 album Trailblazer and book Wild West Village were collectively praised by Rolling Stone, Interview magazine, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Nylon, LA Times, The Line Of Best Fit, Far Out and more. The video for ‘Out of Phase’ was created by Will Kindrick, whose credits include Hot Chip, Ice Cube, and Cardi B.

Ultimately, Paris In The Spring is an album about freedom. From constraints, from preconceptions, and from genre. Taylor experimented with many different musical styles, and weaved them together into something unique. “Sometimes an audience wants to be told, what is this?”, says Taylor. “And I’m refusing to do that. You can find great things in music when you open up to real listening. No one needs to be told ‘what something is’, otherwise why would we be making something so straightforward? Be ready to be surprised, to find something new in music, and let the music resonate with you.”