Frankie Animal bound into the year with buoyant track “Peaches”

Estonian alt-pop outfit Frankie Animal enter 2021 with playful track “Peaches”.

After making waves with their debut album The Backbeat back in 2016, seasoned performers Frankie Animal have continued to delight with their catchy, nostalgic synth sound.

Today, we premiere their first track of the year, “Peaches”. With a throbbing synth backbone, swirling guitars and Marie M. Vaigla’s hypnotic vocals tying it together, “Peaches” is a tender, frivolous track filled with brevity. It’s summery and light in its groovy bass work and truly is the boost needed to get through to warmer weather.

Much like Frankie Animal’s previous oeuvre, the track is simple, yet effective. The trio are excellent at creating big sounds without over complicating and that’s exactly why “Peaches” works so well.

Yet whilst the track is sonically playful and uplifting, it’s deceptively so. Lyrically the track is bittersweet as it charts a relationship in which “people don’t want to or rather cannot be together in front of other people”.

The video accompaniment for the track also follows suit, as in this instance, we see two males, who perhaps feel uncomfortable being together in public due to their homosexual relationship. This creates a gorgeous dichotomy, whereby the joy of the song and the pure fun that we see the pair having, becomes melancholy in tone, tinged with the rather upsetting thought that we still live in a world where people feel the need to hide their love.

To further this tinge of sadness, Frankie Animal also cited that “The lyrics of the song are heavily influenced by Luca Guadagnino’s movie “Call Me By Your Name” – the title is actually a reference of the famous peaches scene”.

The “Peaches” video seems to also take some inspiration from Luca Guadagnino’s masterpiece of a movie. The lingering looks of the pair, the sexual tension that is conveyed through close ups of their hands touching and faces brushing, all emulate the same heart fluttering delight as the film. The overall effect is one of giddy optimism and overwhelming hopefulness despite the underlying malaise.