Les Sins – “Bother”

I work in an office. More specifically, I am a writer who works in an open office plan, sharing a cubicle with two other souls and a world of interruption. To signal that “I’m working, goddamnit,” I don the fanciest pair of noise-canceling headphones this non-profit gal could afford and loop house-heavy DJ mixes until closing time. If the music I’m listening to has lyrics at all, they have to be incredibly simplistic—repetitive enough to induce the trance-like flow necessary to write, but with enough bottom to disguise the cries of “why does it say ‘paper jam’ when there is no paper jam?”

Turns out, Les Sins, the dance-oriented side project of Toro Y Moi (aka Chaz Budnick), has kicked out my workplace jam of the year: “Bother.” As in, “Don’t bother me. I’m working.” It’s a beautiful, perfect lyric repeated over and over and over again, until a last-minute sonic 180 that I’m hard-pressed to explain, but can’t rob the song of its Chicago house-inspired genius. The video for “Bother” is a gorgeously-photographed tribute to the inflatable gents who dance their hot-air hearts (and flappity, flappity arms) out at used car lots across America.

“Bother” will appear on Les Sins’ first full-length LP Michael, due on November 4 from Company Records. Budnick reports that no theme links the album’s tracks, but that he can imagine all of them “playing in the middle of the brilliantly lighted and busy Ginza district in Tokyo.”

It’s uncanny how much my cubicle looks like Ginza.

Les Sins Tour Dates

10-25 Los Angeles, CA – KCRW Masquerade
11-12 San Francisco, CA – 1015 Folsom
11-15 Seattle, WA – Q Nightclub
11-20 New York, NY – Verboten
11-21 Toronto, ON – The Hoxton