There’s a sense with every new Ecca Vandal release that she’s less interested in settling into a sound than detonating whatever expectations were hanging around from the last track. ‘Vertical Worlds’, the latest single lifted from forthcoming album Looking For People To Unfollow, continues that streak with another sharp left turn into controlled chaos.
Announced via Instagram alongside the revelation that the accompanying video was only finalised the night before release, the track carries that same wired intensity. Nothing about ‘Vertical Worlds’ feels over-polished or static. Instead, it surges forward on a thumping, propulsive rhythm that sounds engineered to keep bodies moving while the walls shake around them.
The video leans directly into that momentum, placing Ecca Vandal in a room surrounded by drummers, the visual perfectly mirroring the song’s relentless pulse. It’s loud, physical and slightly overwhelming in the best possible way, capturing the sense that the track could burst through the speakers if pushed any harder.
What makes ‘Vertical Worlds’ land harder than simple volume-for-volume’s-sake is the contrast running through it. Beneath the pounding rhythm sits a chorus stacked with harmonies that unexpectedly recall the sugar-rush melodicism of The Go-Go’s. That collision between aggression and pop instinct has always been part of Vandal’s strength, and here it feels especially locked in.
Backseat Mafia recently caught Ecca Vandal supporting Deftones in Sydney, where she tore through a short, sharp and genuinely explosive set that left the crowd scrambling to keep pace. The songs from Looking For People To Unfollow already felt huge in a live setting, and ‘Vertical Worlds’ only adds to the growing sense that the album could become her most fully realised release yet.
