When inspiration strikes for a musician, sometimes it’s not always within the recording studio or at the laptop and so resourcefulness is necessary. Lyrics on napkins; dodgey phone recordings; scribbling down chords in edges of books. For Norwegian songwriter Thea Glenton Raknes, what she had to had when ‘Dark Horse’ first appeared in her mind’s eye was a pair of take-away chopsticks. As the woman behind the wild recalls, “[I was] banging edges of my teacup and corners of the desk,” and when it came to the studio version, “I wanted to keep a lot of the vibe from my home demo, so when we recorded the song in the studio, I put chopsticks in there along with loads of other percussion bits and bobs lying around in the drum room.” This percussive wealth gives ‘Dark Horse’ a strong rhythm, with a noticeable Arabic influence, which harks back to Raknes’ school days when she spent lunchtimes listening and dancing to Middle Eastern music with her classmates. The melody, however, seems closer to home for the Oslo resident with it’s sweet, lifting pop nature that makes central phrase - “you’re giving me, you’re giving me, and you take it back; you’re a fire leaving me the ashes” - a rather catchy line. With this collage of cultural sounds, it’s appropriate that Thea & The Wild turns to the universal struggle of love and relationships for this infectious new single. - HT