New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Chinatown Slalom return with news of their brand new 5-track EP Meet The Parents on September Recordings for July 2nd and the release of a new single "You Can Bet Your Hat On It'" - a shimmering pop song that sees the band's ghostly harmonies overlaid on their familiar chopped synths and collage-like rhythms. As on their acclaimed debut album, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, the new EP beams with a sense of off-centred, kaleidoscopic fun all anchored in timeless songwriting and serves as further invitation into the intoxicating world of the UK 4-piece.
"You Can Bet Your Hat On It" comes with a Harry Deadman-directed video that adds an overall sense of peculiar unease to the band's first music since 2019. The visual depicts the Liverpudlian group on their best behaviour: donning suits and running a comb through their hair. It's an image that ties into the wider themes of the EP, and how this more melodic, cohesive release serves as a Trojan horse with which to usher in more experimental compositions further down the line.
Lead singer Liam Nolan explains: "The phrase "meet the parents" sums up the EP and how it's being brought to the world. We're self-aware enough to know [the music industry is like] playing a fake game and we want people to know that we're playing it. It's like we're in a relationship and we're meeting the parents for the first time. You still want to be yourself but you're wearing a nice suit and you've brushed your hair."
When Chinatown Slalom first emerged in 2019 with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? their lawlessness was electric. Here was a group who met while studying in Liverpool in the north of England, and, living together in close quarters in an unruly student house, embraced the city's potential as a cosmic and hedonistic playground to produce an album on which big, playful pop choruses, boundary free thinking, and iconic Jai Paul samples lived together in chaotic harmony. The fact that a wall in the home all four members shared was daubed with the phrase "Everyone's invited" wasn't a coincidence. Chinatown Slalom were a band for whom rules and traditions didn't exist and anything was possible.
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