Chet Faker always straddles the emotional bronco like a fucking rodeo champ. It’s what makes his songs slam into your soft underbelly like the head of a bull, not leaving bruises but feeling like a cathartic massage. He never lets his beasts of songs get maudlin and roll around for pets, or feverish with fight so that it starts goring everything it sees. Chief in that vein is a song like ‘1998’, which walks a tighter line than most of his, waving a red shirt in a room full of monstrous emotions, practically begging for one of them to overtake you but still allowing yourself to look to the sky charting your way out. Darkness, disorder and a dubious understanding on how the hell things got so disarrayed reign on ‘1998’. Tip that beast one way, as the popular Homework remix does, and suddenly its a daytime disco mai thai anthem absent all the sumptuously dark lust that underwrote the track.

I’m not the reason you’re looking for redemption
You cut some strings, everything will fade away
You’re tired of using  physical connection

NTEIBINT gets that right. Under his hand, ‘1998’ transforms its bones into a dance floor anthem, one you’re going to be lost in via the siren call of the booming, dirty synths. But there are moments of the song that practically force your body out of its perpetual feeling motion moves and make you lift your head to vocalize the pain in lyrics like ‘We used to be friends’. You’ve got all the lust of the relationship emanating from your body, but your mind is still focused on the hurt. That’s straddling a fine line, as most people become unconscious meat with stumbling legs on a dancefloor. Appealing to some inner part of their mind is akin to Chet Faker’s talent, or at the very least an understanding of the song that’s soaked into the marrow.

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