Kevin Bronson on January 31st, 2018

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“Cigarette Kids,” the new single from Sego, is the most pop song the art-rock duo has done since “Stars,” off their brilliant 2016 album “Once Was Lost Now Just Hanging Around.” Like the latter, “Cigarette Kids” waxes wryly on Los Angeles and its cultural environment. It’s not that Utah natives Spencer Petersen and Thomas Carroll have a love/hate relationship with L.A.; it’s more okay/meh when it comes to what they describe as “the city with the undertow.” “Cigarette Kids,” which follows the singles “Sucker/Saint” and “Whatever Forever” and is ostensibly part of a larger release they haven’t announced yet, thrums and clacks along on a synth that droops like a selfie you wish turned out more flattering. It’s a song for cool kids who are too obsessed with being cool, and, if nothing else, it one-ups Father John Misty as the best song to reference a Silver Lake bar: “Cigarette kids in the Thirsty Crow / sad girls on video / In the city with the undertow / melancholy you’ll never know.”

||| Stream: “Cigarette Kids”