On Spoon’s Transference, Britt Daniel reached new heights of weird minimalism, with shivery vocal effects and stark, geometric guitar lines. “Would That Not Be Nice” finds Daniel with Divine Fits, his supergroup-not-supergroup with Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs) and drum vet Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks), but it goes down very much the same haunted-auteur hall of mirrors. Daniel’s distinctive, raspy cry pierces through the Tron-worthy, grid-like space with artful precision. And then there’s a wobbly synth breakdown.
The video, posted today on Stereogum, applies a similar mad logic to performance footage of the band. The Fits play against a mostly black backdrop, while director Brian Butler bathes them in, to quote a line from the song, “flickering light” — and then some. It’s an appropriately nervy, unsettling clip for a song our reviewer Josh Modell called A Thing Called Divine Fits‘ “zenith.” Daniel, for his part, just calls it his favorite song to play live.
