“1 Player Game” Finds Electric Guest Balancing Humour and Heart

With “1 Player Game,” Electric Guest have delivered a soulful, hip-hop-infused slow-burner that blends cheeky humour with emotional candour. Over a smooth, steadily building groove, Asa Taccone’s vocal rides the beat with an easy charm, even as he faces the messiness of a relationship nearing its end. The verses sway with conversational looseness, but the chorus blooms wide — a warm, harmonised release that feels both triumphant and bittersweet. “It probably should have been called ‘3 Player Game,’” Taccone quips — a flash of wit that keeps the track from sinking into heartbreak. Instead, it’s a graceful, self-aware meditation on love, loss, and knowing when the game is up.

There’s a lightness in the instrumentation — crisp beats, honeyed keys, and a bassline that walks just behind the beat — that offsets the song’s heavier themes. Subtle production touches, from background vocal flourishes to flickers of percussion, give it a lived-in feel, as if the band were inviting you into their living room while they played it.

The single arrives ahead of 10K, out 10 October via Atlantic, a record that sees Taccone and bandmate Matthew Compton reconnect with the spark that started it all. Stripping away outside pressures, the duo built the album in a collaborative bubble, inviting only trusted friends — including Cole MGN, Kacy Hill, and Emmett Kai — into the fold. The title nods to the $10,000 loan Taccone received from a mentor when he first moved to LA, a symbolic return to the risk-taking and creative hunger of their early days.

Following recent singles “Stand Back For You” and “Play Your Guitar,” “1 Player Game” shows Electric Guest at their most personal and playful, bridging the earworm indie-pop of their past with a richer, genre-bending maturity. If 10K is truly a reintroduction, this track suggests it’s as soulful as it is self-assured.