Not much time has passed since For Tracy Hyde put out he(a)rt when you think about it, but two years feels like a whole other lifetime ago. It’s maybe a touch too precious to act like a ton has changed over about 24 months, but it does feel like the same qualities that made their last full-length one of our favorite of 2017 seem far more off-trend than before (or…gasp…maybe this is aging). The same teenage earnestness and big-eyed indie-pop sounds a little tougher to take seriously today, at least in theory. Ahead of new album New Young City, For Tracy Hyde have shared “Sakura No Sono,” a slow-burning number built around a mid-tempo chug building up towards an eventual catharsis wrapped in feedback. A lot of the elements here would fit right in to the band’s last album — sweet melodies slightly submerged under guitar, a sense of longing clawing away throughout — which makes sense, seeing as this corner of rock music in Japan clings to old ideas more strongly than most. Yet For Tracy Hyde still just do it all so well, wrenching all they can out of those verses (credit finding the right balance between noise and catchiness) and making the eventual pay off worth it. The new album comes out Sept. 4, so listeners won’t know if they can recreate the same teenage wonder again, but this offers a promising start. Listen above.
