Big city life, the fabulous and melancholy new album by Smerz, distils this feeling into a potent moonshine. On Big city life, all those paths twist together, creating dazzling formations: lush trip-hop torch songs, swaggering electro grooves, dance tracks that sound like Liquid Liquid blasting into an empty club after the lights come on. Like any good fairytale, Big city life begins with Smerz’s version of an “I Want” song. The title track will strike as familiar to anyone who’s woken up one day and realized they’re running on autopilot: “I heard the trip was great ha ha ha,” Motzfeld sings lifelessly. Day-to-day social niceties are anathema to Smerz; the only cure is “the freedom of a big city,” a wild, unscripted world where you’re not just repeating “I heard that they broke up ha ha ha” over and over at the social function.