C Turtle release ‘Shake It Down’ and announce new album
London band C Turtle have released the single ‘Shake It Down’ and announced details of their new album, Expensive Thrills.
The latest track evokes the essence of alternative rock’s more playful side, namely groups such as Pixies and Pavement. It has a distinctly off-kilter edge and a welcome dose of surrealism thanks to vocalist Mimi McVeigh’s spirited delivery and lyrics, which dovetail with Cole Flynn Quirke’s raspy shouts. Boasting an infectious chorus and a wonky chord progression that adds another dimension to the tongue-in-cheek words, it is arguably the most distilled version of the band yet.
‘Shake It Down’ precedes C Turtle’s new album, Expensive Thrills, which arrives on March 8th via Blitzcat Records. Their latest single follows November’s cacophonous ‘Have You Ever Heard A Turtle Sing?’, and on it, the quartet continues to assert why they are building such a buzz in the capital.
Explaining the motivations behind the track, Quirke says: “A big influence to C Turtle is early Beck. Albums like Stereopathic Soulmanure and Mellow Gold, which use genre-bending to merge hip-hop notions with indie rock have always been really interesting to me, so I wanted to try and structure something in a similar way.”
Continuing: “My first band, Honey Creeper, did this sort of thing all the time, but we rarely could get our live sound to match the recordings, but with ‘Shake it Down’, I think we’ve achieved this. So I see it as kind of a rap song! The lyrics I wrote for it were actually intended for a separate project, but when we tried them out on this, they worked perfectly. We got Mimiko to sing this one because she pulls off the rapping better than I could.”
C Turtle began as Quirke’s solo project until he met Mimi McVeigh, who recently starred in the latest Indiana Jones movie, on a shoot. The two experimented with home recordings until it became clear that McVeigh should join the project as a full-time vocalist and guitarist. Before long, bassist Finlay Burrows and drummer Jim Gervecin had completed the lineup.
Listen to ‘Shake It Down’ below.
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