The Rapture

How Deep is Your Love? Rmx The Rapture

The circular story of the Rapture’s return to DFA requires that we start near the beginning, in 2002, in the early days of both the DFA label and a new century. That year saw the release of “House of Jealous Lovers” – produced by label co-founders Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy – a track so ineffably good it helped reinvigorate a genre, propel DFA Records, define a watershed moment in music and, most impossibly, get indie kids to loosen the fuck up and dance. Following 2003’s critically hailed Echoes – and the seeming end to The Rapture and DFA’s creative collaboration – as well as 2006’s criminally overlooked Pieces of the People We Love, the band entered a musical respite that unexpectedly lasted five long years. Their reemergence with “How Deep Is Your Love,” a single that brings them back to DFA just as the label enters its 10th year, is not so much a return to form as an inspired reminder of their gift for writing songs that captivate and enthrall. More simply put, they’ve created one of the best choruses in recent memory. Set in the midst of a repeated piano house line, handclaps and a lightly buzzing synth drone, Luke Jenner’s surprisingly gospel inflected vocals (seriously – there’s more Clara Ward in Jenner’s wail than any trace of Robert Smith), the song lifts at its chorus into a hard-to-forget trail of gently rising and falling notes. By the time you get to the sax solo – Jenner’s repeated “Hallelujahs” alongside – the revival hits its peak and, thankfully, stays there. On the flipside sits UK-based Emperor Machine’s extended remix, which starts by thickening the bottom end with flanging bass, and then travels through an echo chamber of alien noise and funky, rubberized bass. “How Deep Is Your Love” is the first single from The Rapture’s forthcoming album In The Grace Of Your Love, their first full length release on the DFA label. The record was recorded in Brooklyn and Paris, France, and produced by Phillippe Zdar, who has also worked with Chro