Los Angeles’ Moving Units are one of the very earliest American dance/indie rock bands. Along with the likes of the Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, the Faint and Bloc Party, Moving Units fused indie rock with dance in an effort to bring the grooves and dance to indie fans. Of course, this happened earlier in Manchester in the ’80s with Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses and even earlier than that with Gang of Four, but dance rock really didn’t exist in the US in the late ’80s and those two Manchester bands only really had small pockets of US fans. Nowadays dance music permeates vast swaths of popular music and it’s hard to believe that they ever stood apart. Moving Units have been there through it all putting out great music that rocked as hard as rock could, while setting bodies in motion on the dancefloor.
Now, Moving Units is set to release their fourth album Damage With Care on April 8th and we’ve got a supercharged banger to share with you in “Opposite of Rhyming”, a tune that crackles with excitement and energy. The track is also available for free download on SoundCloud.
Vocalist Blake Miller tells PopMatters that they “were summoning the rhythm section of 70’s era Can while I did my best vocal impression of Wendy O from Plasmatics covering “Pull Up to the Bumper” by Grace Jones. ‘Opposite of Rhyming’ is a Dadaist metaphor I used to describe the corrosive power of human beauty and pride being wielded by a ruthless narcissist. It’s a crisis of conscience I believe everyone can relate to grappling with personally at some point during their lifetime. Boiled down I believe we all desire beauty and to feel beautiful. It’s a very natural impulse that occasionally turns nasty and yields some catastrophic results.”