RÜFÜS DU SOL let someone else sing on Surrender

RÜFÜS DU SOL released their fourth album ‘Surrender’ on 21 October through Rose Avenue and Reprise.

Curtis Harding sings the title track. That’s the first time the trio have handed a guest anything on one of their own records, and they waited four albums and the better part of a decade to do it. Earlier this year they played Red Rocks and put ‘Alive’ and ‘Next To Me’ in front of a crowd with no way of knowing what either song was. The record had been finished for a while, then. They’d simply been showing pieces of it to people in Colorado first.

You can hear why it took them so long. It’s built out of enormous slow buildups, pads pushed until they distort, airy synth work and percussion that keeps insisting on the groove underneath everything else, with Tyrone’s vocal sitting on top of all of it. ‘Wildfire’ is the one that does the most damage. The Grammy nomination the group picked up hasn’t made them any more cautious, and if anything this is the least hedged thing they’ve put out.

What it isn’t is a dance record. A DJ could use some of these, and none of them were built with that in mind. ‘Surrender’ is an album that wants your attention for its whole length, in one sitting, preferably somewhere you can turn it up and not talk over it.