A Nostalgic Strum into the Future: Electric Guest’s Long-Awaited Return
In “Play Your Guitar,” Electric Guest return from a six-year recording hiatus not with a bang, but with something better: a wistful, sun-soaked meditation on loss, uncertainty, and music’s enduring power to heal. The Los Angeles-based duo of Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton have always been curators of catchy, genre-agnostic pop, but their latest single hits a different note—one more mature, more reflective, and arguably more resonant than ever.
The video, composed of lo-fi footage and surprise cameos from Electric Guest’s creative circle (HAIM, Portugal. The Man, Jordana), is a celebration of the musical community that keeps these stories alive. It’s warm, casual, and real—just like the song itself.
What starts with a spare acoustic loop and a hypnotic electronic pulse gradually blossoms into a full-bodied pop gem, rich with subtle textures and an emotional core that sneaks up on you. Taccone’s lyrics may read like a collage of modern anxieties—“fortune teller, politician, operator on the phone”—but the human-sized hook in the chorus grounds them: just play your guitar. In a world buzzing with overanalysis and algorithmic noise, that line feels like a sigh of relief.
There’s a lived-in quality to this track that can only come from artists who’ve taken their time away from the spotlight to observe the chaos and find peace in simplicity. And simplicity is exactly what makes this song work. Taccone’s warm vocal delivery, paired with the track’s spacious mix and comforting chord progression, hits like a friend reaching out through the static.
The song’s backstory—Taccone watching his guitarist, devastated mid-tour, channel his heartbreak into a solo that moved him to tears—is a reminder that sometimes music isn’t just performance, it’s survival. That feeling bleeds through every note of “Play Your Guitar,” elevating it beyond the breezy single it initially appears to be.
For longtime fans, “Play Your Guitar” is a welcome return. For newcomers, it’s a gentle invitation into Electric Guest’s world—where even heartbreak has a groove. With this track, Taccone and Compton don’t just pick up where they left off. They find new emotional territory to explore, and they do it with style, sincerity, and melody to burn.
Electric Guest have always known how to make music that sticks. But here, they prove they also know how to make it matter.
