Countless hours, countless times, Torches-era Foster The People altered–no, saved–my life. When my head was spinning into stormcloud suffocation, it’d tame the skies. When I’d urban bike at night lost in thoughts with less than a casual eye paid to traffic—I thought I could outrun my thoughts–their songs grounded me, and kept me from more than once accidentally barreling onto an expressway. Songs like ‘Broken Jaw’, ‘Helena Beat’, ‘Waste’ and ‘Houdini’ were my voice when I thought mine was strangled. Supermodel era, by comparison, feels insanely muted.

That is, until Wolf Saga’s cover of ‘Coming of Age’.  Wolf Saga bring back the electronic to FTP, who largely abandoned it. I’ve always enjoyed the way the silence of sadness shoots through synths in the spaces left between them. It’s like synths can act as super bodyguards, donning the attire needed to protect whatever emotional client comes their way.   And they travel through space to your ears alongside the client, allowing them to get their unscathed. That flexibility gives dark indietronica its flexbility and its power, and here it allows ‘Coming of Age’s’ darkness to shine through.

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The original always felt like FTP was trying to control the affair because the energy it unleashed was more than they wanted to handle. But here, under Wolf Saga’s arrangement, the song can flap its wings and fly close to the sun, free to unleash the feelings of that struggle before careening safely back to earth. It recaptures that Torches-era magic.

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