In the 90s while I was growing up there were a lot of leftist acts I knew only as one hit wonders. Chumbawamba were anarchists? Manic Street Preachers were socialists? White Town was a communist? It was all lost on my developing brain.
White Town is one of those musicians I came back to later and I’ve enjoyed diving deep into a whole discography. The band’s latest album, Deemab, was released earlier this year and it’s packed with charming pop songs that have a surprising lyrical complexity and more often than not hit the sweet spot of what Jyoti Mishra (the one person behind the band) described as being able to “make you dance, make you sing along, and make you think.” There’s even a reimagining of White Town’s 1997 hit, “Your Woman” that presents it as though it was recorded in 1917.