It's time to dance along to the new Black Midi track and snooze along to the new Lana Del Rey song.
THE BEST:
‘John L’ – Black Midi
This menacing and chaotic new track is the work of UK noise
rockers, Black Midi. Frontman Geordie Greep delivers folksy prose over machine gun bursts of guitar and violin that periodically give
way to dramatic and suspenseful pauses. About two thirds of the way through, the
track then disintegrates into a Behold-the-Arctopus-style prog freakout. All of
this is accompanied by a psychedelic dance choreography, which plays out like one
of Dr Suess’s nightmares (THAT ILLUMINATI THING WITH ARMS IN THE BACKGROUND IS
TERRIFYING). It’s the most inappropriate song to have a dance choreography to – and
yet the band pull it off spectacularly. A new album will be dropping this year.
‘hypnotized’ – Tune-yards
Tune-yards are back with their typically eccentric style of
indie pop. A patchwork instrumental of shuffling drums, fidgety bass and sporadic
keys provides a fun backdrop for Merrill Garbus’s dynamic voice. It's both frenetic and catchy. They’ve pretty much copied that Anna Meredith video
from a couple years ago with the toy train, but I’ll let that slide.
‘Lucid’ – brushstroke
Psychedelic r&b artist, brushstroke (all lowercase), has released
a new track titled ‘Lucid’. It’s got a similarly lo-fi quality to his last
single ‘Freeze’ – the chords that open that track sound particularly gauzy
as if they’re been played through an ancient gramophone. The track becomes more ‘lucid’ as the rest of
the instrumentation and vocals come in. It’s punctuated by a killer chorus and
to top it off there’s an exciting beat change at the very end.
‘Just Like Smoke’ – marigolden
Melbourne artist, marigolden (again, all lowercase. I’M NOT
JUST BEING LAZY WITH THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON), delivers this hypnotic soul track titled
‘Just Like Smoke’, which is lyrically centred around embracing impermanence. It
opens with her semi-singing-semi-rapping over sparse percussion and jazzy
guitar chords. It gradually develops into a fully-fledged song with extra
instrumental layers joining the mix. The fluttering chorus is also very pretty.
‘Josh’ – Peach PRC
While checking out the new Justin Bieber track ‘Peaches’, I
stumbled across this much-more-interesting pop song from an artist called Peach
PRC. It’s a breakup anthem that pulls no punches – the chorus is literally ‘fuck
off, stop calling me Josh’. The cutesy delivery somehow makes it all the
more badass. She’s like some sassy version of Carly Rae Jepsen. Must suck to be Josh right now.
THE WORST:
‘White Dress’ – Lana Del Rey
The piano backdrop is remarkably boring. Her delivery of ‘down
at the Men In Music Business Conference’ feels very clunky. And I’m not
sure why she’s chose to spend the whole song singing out of her vocal range. Yeah,
this new Lana track is not the one.