Premiere: The Lawsuits’ Funk Up on “You Aren’t the Same”

Forget New York, Los Angeles or Nashville, for the last few years the most fertile and vibrant music scene in the country has been in Philadelphia. The evidence is all around you: [ASSUMES PHILLY VOICE] you got your Kurt Viles over dere, and your War on Drugs over dere, and your Man Mans, and your Pissed Jeans etc. etc so on and so forth. That’s present day Philly, which adds tremendously to that city’s already stellar music history. Enter the Lawsuits: the band would make Teddy Pendergrass proud, and their sometimes-funky, R&B-laced sound, one could argue, would sound right at home on Philadelphia International Records. There’s no doubt singer Vanessa Winters’ soulful voice has some Gamble and Huff-ness injected into it, which is perhaps why she often lends it to Philly groups like rappers Ground Up when they need help murdering a hook. On the Lawsuits’ new song, “You Aren’t the Same,” which you can hear after the jump, she sings a lovelorn tale of a relationship gone awry. “No dreams are designed for two,” she puts it plainly.

The band plays Mercury Lounge on Oct. 1, so listen to “You Aren’t the Same” over and over and sing the words back to them when they’re in town.