This is a slice of electro pop that feels totally at ease in its own skin. With a super-slick contemporary production and featuring a huge slab of vocals and rat-a-tat percussion on the pre-chorus (which is almost as catchy as the chorus itself), Disconnect comes purring out of the traps and sounds oddly content in its discontent.
And that’s perhaps the cleverest bit of this pop confection: it describes a modern relationship in all of its off-again, on-again confusion. Is the narrator upset or relieved that this dysfunctional relationship is so brittle? “We’re dysfunctional / We’ll do anything for love’.
The unique Darla Jade vocal is warm when layered but also has an icy edge when solo, in the vein of, say, London Grammar. The one-note melody on the chorus is remarkably catchy and sung with a precision that such simplicity requires. It develops into warm synth pads that cuddle you through to a counterpoint question-and-answer conclusion that’s a truly satisfying end to an epic chorus.
The song concludes before it hits the 3 minute mark and steps out smartly with the vocal taking the listener by the hand immediately: ‘I wanna pull the plug / But I’m addicted to your touch.’ It doesn’t hang about, there’s no slack.
It’s a song for our times, indeed – a meditation on loneliness and togetherness which somehow gathers more meaning in the context of all the recent lockdowns and the craving for human contact. In fact, I’m going to re-connect with it again now!
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