'Take Yourself With You’ from Stellular by Rose Elinor Dougall

For eager eagle eyed fans of Rose Elinor Dougall ‘Take Yourself With You’ was not exactly a new song (it surfaced on The Quietus’ Soundcloud page at the end of 2014), but it was dressed up in a subtly more seductive outfit that in a way summed up the entirety of her Stellular set. Now someone more in tune with the preoccupations of Younger Generations might be able to tease out some threads and references which connect to, um, whatever whoever whichever. But for Old Fogies like me the touchstones of Stellular were the likes of Broadcast, Saint Etienne and Laetitia Sadier: Pop infected with mild viruses that ensure the sounds fit within expected templates but only just and sometimes only just not quite. Perhaps some people underestimate the value of just not quite. Perhaps it is just me.

It’s to Sadier that ‘Take Yourself With You’ in particular most effectively sidles up to in my crowded, clouded brain. That’s a compliment, in case you were wondering, and you probably were. Dougall sings in a voice that is sweet but not saccharine, soft but not sentimental. There is a glamorous shallowness to the sound, and I mean that in the most positive of ways for it is a shallowness that allows surface patterns to glisten and beguile in the way that fabulous Pop always does. It facilitates slight shifts of rhythm and inflection, like rays of sunlight refracting and reflecting on golden sands. Squinting just so.

If I squint just so I can see Rose Elinor Dougall elegantly at home in a 1930s nightclub, singing siren songs shrouded in clouds of cigarette smoke drifting up, up and away from slickly dressed advertising executives and slimly pouting debutantes picking pockets for kicks. Equally she’s there in a Parisian Left Bank cafe sniggering at Sartre whilst crooning seditiously in Simone’s quivering ear or skimming around the dance floor of Studio 54 stealing Bianca’s doves and kicking stiletto heels through Andy’s entourage. Timeless and effortless.