“Stupid Boy” starts with a joke and ends with a release. A playful bass synth holds the centre while vocals, guitar and violin swim circles around each other — and then the whole thing swells into something louder, messier, truly cathartic. That’s the sound of 1000 Rabbits at their best, and it’s why Consequence made this single their lead pick of the week.
The London art-pop quintet — Laura on violin and viola, Liv on synth, Paolo on guitar, River on vocals, Luke on drums — used to be called Rabbitfoot, and “Stupid Boy” is their first new music since their debut six-track EP Are We Friends Yet? came out in May on Young, the label home of Sampha, The xx and Robyn. The single landed November 3, premiered on Huw Stephens’ BBC 6 Music show, and the video — directed by Cuan Roche — follows the band’s daily life “through the lens of a fish tank,” growing more abstract as the track builds. The band developed the song live over a summer of festivals and touring: “singing all together, getting into the crowd, dancing and shouting… one of our wildest, angriest, most cathartic experiments so far.” You can hear that in it — this is a song that was worked out in front of people, with group vocals and a payoff that feels earned rather than arranged.
DIY called it the band’s “most cathartic effort to date,” and the co-signs stack up: Consequence’s staff picks, Stereogum, DIY’s Neu Bulletin, plus sold-out headline shows in London, Berlin, Glasgow, Cologne and Rotterdam and festival appearances at The Great Escape, Latitude, Reeperbahn and C2C. At 4:12 it’s the longest track in this week’s Ten, and it uses every second — the theatrical vocal from River, the violin threading through the noise, the moment the whole band seems to shout at once. A song about being young and furious and together, played by a band who clearly are. Loud, live-wire, and exactly the kind of controlled chaos the Ten exists to catch.
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