Jake Bugg – What Doesn’t Kill You’
‘What would you do?’ would be the first thing to say to anybody condemning the 20-year-old Jake Bugg to sell-out status already. After his trip to the beautiful beaches of Malibu with Rick Rubin, he’s back with this anarchic new track, ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’.
Full of the confidence of having a 20,000-strong crowd at the Pyramid Stage at this year’s Glastonbury and having one of the most recognised producers in the world, Rick Rubin, hunt you down to work with you, Jake Bugg could be forgiven for getting in a little over his head.
Having had the great success of his eponymous debut album and then sipping cocktails in Rubin’s mansion on the beaches of Malibu, it would be easy to forget your roots.
Jake Bugg, with ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’, shows all the naysayers just how wrong they are. Blasting out of the speakers from the first second, this song travels on with only one trajectory, a hurtling stratospheric, warp-speed kind of trajectory, much like Bugg’s career. Thunderous and furious in equal measures, Bugg employs a frenetic vocal which can at times seem like a rap, to astonishing, infectious effect.
The delivery of his still homespun lyrics about love and knives in the car parks of Nottingham makes the track what it is. With its relentless pace and coarse reproach, it delivers the guitar-driven, lightspeed-paced rock ‘n’ roll we loved from his first album.
Jake Bugg seems to be telling the world that no matter where he is and no matter how the world around him changes, he will certainly find a way to turn it all into a crass, crashing cacophony of indie rock ‘n’ roll that will make men bounce and women tremble.
Whether we see the shift of status and scene change Bugg like it has so many others is yet to be seen. However, I suggest we take a leaf from the man himself and just enjoy the ride.
Check it out here.
