White Town "I Wanna Be Your Ex" on Golly Jane Records

White Town is the project of Jyoti Mishra who had a #1 hit song in the UK back in '97 with the song "Your Woman" a gender bending track about being in love with someone who REALLY can't reciprocate. It's a sort of G Love track that plays with rhythms and junky, odd tones in a quirky late '90s way. He's continued to create music and this single comes 25 years (bad math - ed) later with another melted electronic pop song on the Golly Jane Record label.

A-Side's "I Wanna Be Your Ex" comes in with heavy square waves building into a massive mix of airy synths and Jyoti's vocal that slides in over top of this in one take, no auto tuning according to the liner notes. It's a spinning, chaotic track that fills up all available free space in the wave and as was the case in "Your Woman" makes the absolute best out of a potentially messed up situation. Heavy amounts of programming and midi sequencing, all of the sinks in the house thrown at this thing, the months of tinkering left to that one take, an interesting idea. An orphan of late '90s Depeche Mode and The Postal Service building and building the bonkers multi tracking until the very last second.
B-Side's "Rainy Day" was one of his earliest songs rerecorded in one take again with just an acoustic, capturing his intimate performance, very much what a great B-Side should be, you get that stripped down insight into the process especially of older material that the artist is still in love with. It sounds like this single is trying to get at the scope of his twenty five year career in two sides of a tiny record. A noble enterprise.

Pick this up from Golly Jane Records on yellow heavy vinyl.