Big City Life EDITS Turns Smerz’s Songs Into Shapeshifting Art”

The figures on the cover of Big city life—that could be you, that could be me. Smerz’s latest LP already felt like a world you could inhabit, not merely relate to, a record built to live in: felt under your skin, snagged on the pedal of a Lime bike, carried along neon-lit streets. Now, with Big city life EDITS, Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt’s songs are stretched, twisted, and refracted by 18 reimagining acts, proving just how malleable their work really is. This remix album doesn’t exist to clarify meaning or to make the songs more digestible—it exists to warp them, to show what can happen when Smerz’s arch, minimal pop is refracted through the vision of a dozen other adventurous minds.

Across 14 tracks, the duo’s voices remain anchors, floating above deconstructed electronic landscapes that often bear little resemblance to the originals. Molina’s reinterpretation of “Roll the dice” is a disorienting trip through hypnotic European dub; lyrics that once radiated affirmation now feel predatory, as if you’ve wandered into a neon dive bar you weren’t meant to enter. New York’s electroclash duo turn “Imagine this” into a sleek, surreal vignette worthy of After Dark 2, threading the line between high kitsch and high glamour with impeccable timing.

Where some “alternative” pop can feel like unfinished pop—ideas hidden behind avant-garde textures—Big city life EDITS makes clear that Smerz’s songwriting is built on sturdy bones. Fine strips “A thousand lies” to its essentials, layering voice over a jazz-folk haze that feels plucked from the Norman Fucking Rockwell! sessions. VVTZJ’s rework of “You got time and I got money” flirts with Lana-esque grandeur, Clairo warbling like a lounge singer on her final night, all the while wrapped in luxurious, slow-burning soul arrangements. These moments pay homage not just to a lineage of atmospheric pop but to Smerz themselves: the duo’s songs are sufficiently elastic to carry multiple interpretations without losing their identity.

Big city life EDITS is more than a remix album—it’s a demonstration of curatorial precision. To assemble MIKE, Erika de Casier, Astrid Sonne, haloplus+, and a host of other producers on a single project is to stake a claim: Smerz isn’t just part of pop’s future; they’re guiding it. The album moves seamlessly, so much so that it can feel like just another Smerz LP, even while it simultaneously celebrates the transformative power of collaboration. Years from now, when teens on some new social platform post the tracklist and gape at its lineup, it’ll be easy to forget the logistics. All that will matter is hearing VVTZJ’s edition of “You got time and I got money” and remembering what it felt like to witness the sound of Smerz’s world bending before your ears.