Jetlag‘s last outing, “Prozac Nation,” ran on horns and social commentary, so “Wicked Tongue” is a proper left turn. Released 29 July, it trades the brass for fuzzed-out guitars and calls itself Desert Glam Disco, which is as good a shorthand as any for a track that splits its time between paranoid introspection and full swagger. It came out of frontman Simon Glancy’s breakup, specifically the disorienting aftermath of nights he couldn’t fully remember and the anxiety of not knowing what he might have said or done. Rather than laying that out chronologically, the song structures itself like a flashback, tense and closed-in during the verses before the chorus kicks the door open.
And that chorus is where the track really earns its comparisons. It’s genuinely psychedelic and high-energy, carrying the hypnotic low-end weight of Queens of the Stone Age but with a looser, more modern swirl to it that leans closer to Tame Impala at points, like the band has taken that desert-rock heaviness and run it through a more contemporary filter. It’s heavy without ever losing its groove, which isn’t an easy balance to strike. The drum work deserves particular credit here, locking in with the riff so precisely that the two feel like a single instrument rather than a rhythm section and guitar operating separately. That tightness is what lets the song swing between claustrophobic and euphoric without ever feeling disjointed.
Lyrically, the record sits with the discomfort of things you can’t take back, of wondering whether you’ve become someone you don’t recognize, and it wisely doesn’t try to resolve that discomfort into anything tidy. Instead it just turns it into momentum. “Wicked Tongue” is a strong marker of where Jetlag are headed next, and if this is the sound of the band leaving their brass section behind, it’s hard to argue with the trade.
