'Look But Don't Touch': even Polyphia's joke songs are great

7 April 2019 | 9:07 am | Alex Sievers
Originally Appeared In

A yeet in musical form.

New Polyphia is a yeet in musical form. 



It just seems like yesterday that Polyphia had new material out, with 2018's genre-defying 'New Levels New Devils'. Yet the American progressive instrumental band love their memes and jokes, so of course they couldn't pass up an April Fools release. Enter 'Look But Don't Touch', proof that even when this band is taking the absolute piss, they're still the GOAT.

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With killer tones, harmonic richness, interesting transitions, and filthy trap beats, this new tune really feels like a cool sister-track to the songs off of their last LP. However, as this is Polyphia we're talking about here, that means there's still those classic slapped guitar parts, that awesome melodic contrast, big jumps in timbre, as well as some excellent instrumental accents. Like drummer Clay Aeschliman's hi-hat note-value changes at 2:09, those sweet little harmonies in song's middle metal section, and the intro's heavy, dirty-as-fuck riff. There's a lot going on here, to say the least!

For the second time ever, there's once again vocals heard in a Polyphia track - the first being the summer-vibes of the chilled out 'So Strange', featuring Cuco, from their previous record. Here, L.A. electro-pop singer Lewis Grant takes this new song out to it's outro with a minimal vocal passage, with such lovely voice and some great chords too. Lewis's latest LP, 'Make Me Scared Again', was actually engineered by producer Y2K, who also did Polyphia's last album, so there's the connection right there.

As for the semi-NSFW music video for 'Look But Don't Touch', it's basically one big silly meme (tide podes, anyone?), with pretty much every kind of video edit ever being used. It's a really dumb yet totally fitting Millennial shitpost for what was a film clip released on April 1st. Either way, this rips! Look, but don't touch, below: