Premiere: SILENTSHOUT, ‘Knuckle’

Kevin Bronson on March 21st, 2019

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Lovers, family, close friends: They can be a real pain in your kindess. “It shouldn’t be such torture, just to care,” Alina Cutrono sighs in “Knuckle,” the latest single from her avant-pop project with Theo Karon, SILENTSHOUT.

The sentiment might be bluntly stated, but the song is anything but. Karon’s minimal synths and electronic beats create a pastiche of anxiety before building to a throbbing zenith, as if to give Cutrono the courage to deliver the lines “But are you on my side? / ‘Cause I’m on your side.”

The song, Cutrono says, “is about the kind of love that exists between very close friends. A closeness that is challenging. Your dearest friends are the ones that have the power to push you to your limits in both good and bad ways.”

It’s the third single from SILENTSHOUT’s forthcoming album, “You Will Learn,” out August 30, and the follow-up to February’s “Nothing Behind My Eyes,” an elaborate excursion that features piano, tape loops, stacked harmonies and a nine-person string ensemble. The duo, who work out of a recording studio they built, Hotel Earth, previously collaborated when Cutrono was releasing music under the name Alina Bea. “Knuckle” is officially out on Friday.

||| Stream: “Knuckle”