Fresh off announcing his multimedia collaboration, A Home Unfamiliar, which also doubles as a COVID-19 relief project, Austin artist Mobley is back with a Foster The People-led rework of his single, “Nobody’s Favourite.”
Originally released as a single in February 2020, the “Nobody’s Favourite” rework is the anchoring single to Mobley’s new EP, Young & Dying in the Occident Supreme. Thought initially as a self-described “dancepunk number,” the Foster The People rework pulls away from the “punk” portion and pushes full-steam ahead towards the “dance” side of the original concept.
Unintentionally or not, the original version of “Nobody’s Favourite” leans awfully heavily on a couple of teeter-totter guitar riffs quite similar to that of Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know The Better” and “Do I Wanna Know?” from The Arctic Monkeys. With the Foster rework, thought the riffs are still present, the track is reimagined in the shape of a punchy, hypnotic synth-pop dance track not out of place among the catalogs of the DFA label releases and Theophilus London.
As quickly as anything becomes relevant in 2020, it is buried beneath an unending pile of other; a song from February may as well be from another lifetime. For Mobley, the rework feels like a reminder, perhaps even a pang, of all the late, summery dance nights currently shelved (or relegated to Zoom) until further notice.
-Benjamin Wiese
Photo credit: Andrew Bennett