Son Lux, the band of composers enlisted to score 2023’s genre-defying Best Picture 'Everything Everywhere All At Once,' is back with their first release of new music since their prismatic 49-track soundtrack.

“Risk of Make Believe” is the title track and first single for the EP. The song encapsulates what made the experimental rock trio a perfect fit for the film: an unlikely alchemy of beguiling sounds and heart-on-sleeve vulnerability.

But where 'Everything Everywhere' never sat still, patience and ease pervade “Risk of Make Believe.” The song opens with what sounds like drums through a vocoder up in the choir loft. Lott’s voice cuts through the haze: “You don’t have to leave a trace.” Chang and Bhatia join with a groove that is precise but pliant, drums and bass moving together as if in slow-motion. What unfolds is an unhurried song that never feels restless in its gradual evolution. Lott sings, “What’s the risk of make believe?” at the center of what could be a plea to give oneself permission to change.

Fractals of guitar lines unfurl like crystallizing water over the song’s last chorus, a vivid transmutation of its first. “Face to face, with someone you are, for the first time.” The slow metamorphosis is nearly complete.

But Bhatia’s final sinewy guitar lines pull back the curtain on an unexpected place in the song’s coda. Shimmering pulses cling to the edge of audibility under Lott’s closing incantation: “You don’t have to be afraid, for the first time.”

The single and EP are further evidence of Son Lux's versatility, wild creativity, and voracious appetite for collaboration, whether on record, stage, and screen or, most recently, as artists-in-residence with the Bluecoats drum corps marching band.

released January 17, 2025