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Music

Common Body Are the Collaborative Pop Group You Need in Your Life

Georgia and Cherish from JUCE return, reborn from the ashes with new track “Luck of the Draw.”
Ryan Bassil
London, GB

In Las Vegas they have a thing called "a losing streak". Essentially it's a term degenerate gamblers use to describe the amount of money they've fucked away in a cigarette-scented casino but there's also some weird, cosmic truth to the phrase. Think about it: bad things always come in threes, you're on a run of never-ending bad luck, life just really isn't going your way lately.

It's this idea of the losing streak and it's happier, positive flipside that forms the basis of Common Body's debut single "Luck of the Draw" (listen below). "It's a real thing, fate will spin you around and you have no control over it," explains Georgia Lee when we meet in a pub in east London, talking about the single and a conversation she'd had out in Nevada with a taxi driver on a losing streak. She continues…: "But I've always liked that Bob Dylan lyric, 'I can't help it if I'm lucky'."

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Completed by Cherish Kaya, Common Body are well-versed in the opposing poles of fortune – the glorious highs and the pummelling lows. As two-thirds of the band JUCE, both Cherish and Georgia were on their way to pop stardom. Their debut single "Call You Out" was an instant underground hit (we named it as one of our songs of the year in 2014), The Guardian profiled them, a major label deal was signed. And then… lead singer Chalin Barton moved out to Hawaii. (Chalin says the band had already broken up months beforehand, initially at SXSW in 2015).

"The distance apart really wasn't going to work out," explains Cherish. "But Georgia and I still had this vision of a band and there was never any question that we would carry on making music together." As the months passed Cherish and Georgia entered various studios, working with people like Andrew Hale (Sade) – who has produced "Luck of the Draw" alongside Common Body. "Our vision has developed, we've grown up a bit, there's a different constellation of people around," explains Georgia of the newer, fresh palette brought about by the new Common Body band.

Where JUCE was very much three people, Common Body is more a rotating cast of members – a sort of creative hub, a living breathing embodiment of the positive effect of collaborating with other musicians. There are eight people playing on "Luck of the Draw": a drummer, vocalists, a horn section – and of course Cherish and Georgia – all coming together and letting loose with a cool breath of new-wave funk. It's a perfect end to the summer months, a sassy waltz into Autumn, a complete coalescence of what makes pop music so great without being too overproduced.

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"One of the reasons we called it Common Body was the idea of a body, all these different parts come in – you can switch them around – and doing a big group vocal," says Georgia, speaking on the group's set-up. The process of bringing people in, having them play on the record – it makes Common Body sound far more natural (and as a result more interesting) than their contemporaries.

Because let's be honest here: there is a relative dearth of good British pop groups at the moment,iwth acts like WSTRN being little more than a label-assisted collection of songwriters, groups like M.O failing to hit the mark. Common Body are instead presenting something that works, which you can assume is because it's far more real, musical and creative than their counterparts. It has that thing: the feeling that can't be argued with, it can only be accepted and felt.

At one point in our conversation, Cherish says "We never really got to realise the full vision of JUCE." However with Common Body you get the sense that original idea for JUCE has expanded, grown – become its own new and better thing. Luck may come into it (it always does) but on the basis of this new track alone Common Body are like a phoenix, reborn and reaching for the sky.

This piece was edited on Friday, 22 September 2017 to reflect a statement sent from Barton.

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