There’s something fitting about a song called ‘Shortcuts’ taking years to find its final form.
GOODTWIN’s new single began as a bedroom-written idea Augusta “Gus” Alexander once considered too slight to pursue. But instead of forcing it into shape, she left it alone. When the song eventually resurfaced, collaboration gave it the space to become something richer, and that sense of rediscovery is woven into the final track.
Built around a percussion-led groove, layered vocal harmonies and an expressive saxophone line, the song moves with an easy, sunlit confidence. The arrangement is light on its feet, but there’s enough detail in the production to keep revealing new corners as it unfolds.
The song evokes open roads, lowered windows and wide skies without tipping into pure escapism. There’s a quiet rebelliousness in the atmosphere, as though the track is less concerned with where the journey ends than with the freedom of taking a different route altogether.
GOODTWIN’s influences are broad enough to make sense of that balance. There are traces of Men I Trust in the softness, Fleetwood Mac in the warmth, Yo La Tengo in the understated experimentation and Japanese Breakfast in the way dreaminess and emotional detail are allowed to coexist. Yet ‘Shortcuts’ is strongest when those references blur.
As the first glimpse of the forthcoming debut EP Soft Serve, the single establishes a world that feels breezy without becoming weightless. GOODTWIN’s description of the project as “Open Road Music” is apt, but there’s more going on beneath the surface than simple nostalgia. The song is also about revisiting something abandoned and discovering that it still has somewhere to go.
As an idea that once seemed too simple has been given time, new collaborators and a broader frame, the result is a track that feels warm, playful and quietly assured. And ultimately, ‘Shortcuts’ works because it understands that sometimes the long way around is what makes a song worth keeping.