Locations Drop “Moves”

Slinky and slightly ominous in style, the menacing guitar part in Locations’ “Moves” is definitely the song’s biggest mood-setter, and you needn’t listen to the track more than once to understand what I mean. Locations is a very moody kind of rock n’ roll band, and I think this latest release might be the most forward of any piece they have stamped their name on thus far in that it makes no mistake indicating exactly what their artistic priorities are both now and looking into the future of their sound as it stands to appear from this angle. Inside of the first thirty seconds here, we’re feeling a chill from the ensuing harmony – and once the lead vocal is in the big picture, it’s as though that chill has grown tenfold.  

The music video for “Moves,” whether intentionally or not, has an almost disturbingly surreal quality that I’ve noticed trending elsewhere in indie rock over the past couple of years (but scarcely witnessed in such a conceptual manner as it’s presented here). Locations doesn’t conceal their devilish allusion to the populism that exists within their scene in this visual component of the release by any means; on the contrary, I think they bask in the danger element of the music all the more by embracing this sort of rebelliousness in their on-screen work.  

The vocal harmonies get to be a little excessive in the chorus, primarily because of how overstated they become in the master mix, but this seems totally intentional and actually rather smart when I hear the song over again. It’s like producers had made up their minds whether or not we’re to be focusing on the vocal dynamic or the fabric of the instrumentation guiding it from the backdrop, and in the end, there’s more than enough of either to really appreciate what could have transpired here had the band not been so precise. That’s one element that could potentially be expanded upon in a proper live version of “Moves,” which we’ll hopefully have the chance to see and hear a lot sooner than later.  

The linguistics shift from one tone to the next here is really intriguing when you first encounter it, and I think that was precisely the point Locations was going for. There’s something to be said about using texture, tone, and even odd tempos to create an atmosphere in your music, particularly when taking into account how archaic a lot of mainstream pop musicians find the very notion to be, and that’s part of why I think Locations has been able to develop the following they have despite having so much competition on either side of the Atlantic Ocean in the past few years.  

“Moves” is definitely an unconventional tune in all the right ways, and if there were any debate as to whether or not Locations were on a road to unoriginality in comparison to the dispatches of their peers, I think one look at the video for this single is doing to dash any such commentary from top to bottom. Locations have a unique style that has had a bit of time to simmer and develop in all the right ways, and if provided a bit more room and resources to collaborate with better influences than they’re presently working with, I believe they will find their feet in the mainstream eventually.  

Mindy McCall