Listen: I Have A Tribe – “Yellow Raincoats” [Premiere]

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Since we at Best Fit last – and first – reported on the enigmatic I Have A Tribe last summer, we’ve come to learn it is the musical project of Irishman Patrick O’Laoghaire. We are now pleased to premiere the title track off O’Laoghaire’s debut EP, Yellow Raincoats.

O’Laoghaire’s hushed, pitch-perfect soprano is vaguely reminiscent of an amalgam of Wild Beasts’ Tom Fleming and Hayden Thorpe. “Yellow Raincoats” is at once a cagey but gorgeously blossoming tune. Initially ushered in simply on the back of a percussive tin-can sounding synth loop, abbreviated with a repeating series of woodpecker knocks, we’re gradually treated to the addition of dreamy electric guitar jangles midway through. Not content to stop there, O’Laoghaire graduates fully to a sly, earthen funk for the song’s last third.

The impressive trick O’Laoghaire turns here is leading the song from its dark, frigid origin through to what amounts to a rainforest of sound – lush, organic, still dewy with mystery. All the while, like the best visual artists, O’Laoghaire takes care to identify in this jungle of sonic diversions his focal point: the girl in the yellow raincoat.

Yellow Raincoats is out on 12 May in the UK, following an appearance at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton on 9 May.