In Cold Blood (alt-J song)


"In Cold Blood" is a song by British indie rock band alt-J. It is the second track and second single from their third studio album, Relaxer, and was released as a digital single on 29 March 2017 by Infectious Music and Atlantic Records. The song was written by Joe Newman, Gus Unger-Hamilton, and Thom Sonny Green and produced by Charlie Andrew. It features a brass section recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London and a Casiotone the band purchased for £1.05 on eBay. The song's title is a reference to the novel of the same name by American novelist Truman Capote. The song's composition dates back to when the band started during their studies at the University of Leeds.

Composition and lyrics

In an interview with NPR, the band said:
The song starts with the eight digit binary phrase: "zero one one one zero zero one one", which is 163, 115, and 73, which translates to a lowercase "s" under the ASCII system. It is unclear what this means, although the band labeled a teaser for the song "3WW" with the binary ASCII encoding “00110011 01110111 01110111”. If extended to use all of the numbers in the line we get the number 011100110 111 which is 1847 - the year that Samuel Colt sold his patented revolvers to the Texas rangers in the war against Mexico.

Music video

The music video for the song was released on 9 May 2017. It was directed by Casper Balslev, who had previously directed videos for Marina and the Diamonds and MØ. The video is narrated by Iggy Pop, frontman of The Stooges.

Performances

On 18 April 2017, alt-J performed "In Cold Blood" on the 656th episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The band performed the song with a backing horn section and with Questlove, the drummer of Jimmy Fallon's house band The Roots. On 19 May 2017, alt-J performed "In Cold Blood" on the sixth episode of the fiftieth series of Later... with Jools Holland. On 5 June 2017, alt-J performed "In Cold Blood" on Conan.
The band also performed "In Cold Blood" for their second NPR tiny desk concert in an acoustic, string accompanied medley.

Critical reception

"In Cold Blood" received favorable reviews from contemporary music critics. Robin Murray of Clash called it "both straight-forwardly melodic and fascinatingly complex, the interweaving vocals underpinned by bleeping electronics and flashes of brass."

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from Tidal

alt-J

Weekly charts

Year-end charts