Voka Gentle – ‘Battle Sequence (I’m Atomic)’
A wonderfully energetic, hypnotic piece of electronic music. My first experience of Voka Gentle, and, well, what a first impression! It’s a fascinating song, both paranoid and determined while still being catchy and emotionally accessible; when the groove locks in at about two-and-a-half minutes, you’ll know what I mean.
Hot Face – ‘Bumble Been’
A 70-second burst of garage punk recorded in one take and, by the sounds of it, tailor-made to be played live. It does what it says on the tin, the musical equivalent of poking a bruise on your leg just for kicks.
Foy Vance – ‘Hi, I’m The Preacher’s Son’
How much should we read into allusion? The Bacon-esque cover art, the Credence chorus, the title riffing on Dusty Springfield? I could spend hours chewing over this song, its entanglement of the autobiographical and the referential, falling for its regimented percussion and the intrigue of its riff.
Will White – ‘6:30 AM’
Its opening reminds me of Adele’s take on ‘Make You Feel My Love’, before bleeding into a slightly more optimistic version of Stephen Fretwell’s ‘-’. A mawkish sunrise, perhaps, but aren’t they all?
Airling – ‘Better When You Groove’
Aside from the opening barrage of rhyme (‘used/abused/you’), ‘Groove’ is an assured pop song that lands on the right side of the motivation/preaching divide, delivering exactly what it prescribes with its relaxed-yet-danceable titular refrain.
Ratboys – ‘The World, So Madly’
Some twang, some twee, a singalong chorus – what more can you want? It feels wrong to listen to this song in a winter month; Julia Steiner’s voice should be heard when the air is sweet, when the flowers are full-cheeked.
Nothing – ‘toothless coal’
Put Trent Reznor, Chester Bennington and Liam Howlett in a rusty saucepan, add some Kevin Shields as a thickening agent, bit of salt and pepper to taste, and you get ‘toothless coal’. This isn’t Shoegaze, this is looking at the bottom of a stomping boot – Solepleading.
Smag På Dig Selv – ‘Like A Word I Never Knew’
Relentless as a racing heartbeat, this six-minute instrumental allures and entrances as readily as it casts you into isolation, alone but for a wailing saxophone and the rumble of blood in your ears.
Djanaba, Hylander – ‘Buster’
A fizz of hyperactive electro-pop, Djanaba and Hylander keep ‘Buster’ glittering without burning your retinas. The vocals are the spoonful of syrup to the lyrics’ well-deserved venom, and that modulated synth towards the end – think Passion Pit or Basement Jaxx on x2 speed – is the cherry on top.
By Storm – ‘And I Dance’
‘And I Dance’ taps into the same emotive sonics as ‘Runaway’, the autotuned harmonies underpinning RiTchie’s echoed urges of ‘dance’. The vocal layers evoke a late-night haziness, a tangled mass of whizzing and static that, towards the end, even clips through the song itself. It’s the walk home after a night out, empty-headed, overwhelming as air, urgent as a gutting realisation. What can you do but dance?
Natalie Jane Hill – ‘I Thought Love Meant’
The brilliance of this song, besides Hill’s empathetic voice and the charming instrumentation, is in its title. Every instance of misunderstood love is grounded in shared misapprehensions, that Hill too misunderstood love in the same ways. But that melancholia is past tense (thought, meant), and Hill reassures you that love never meant pain, or suffering, or bitterness. What you had been feeling wasn’t love at all and, coming out of the other side, all those unnecessary self-persecutions become pale anecdotes, carpet on which to tread whilst on the road to the real thing.
Langkamer – ‘Babe Pig In The City’
A song in two halves, ‘Babe Pig In The City’ shows that irreverence doesn’t equal flippancy. The first minute and a half swaggers with a momentum and wit which belie an existentialist core; this comes to the fore in the second half, the lullabilic melody pleading itself into a frenzy. Almost as good as the film.
Parissa Tosif – ‘River (گلریز)’
I was never any good with languages at school, much to my chagrin. However, the (potentially sole) benefit is that songs sung in a language other than English or Pig Latin – judging by the title, the second half is Farsi – become purely an exercise in sonics: how do the words sound, and how are they delivered, irrespective of their meaning? Parissa Tosif’s delicate vocals conjure an intimate scene, maybe one of longing, or regret, waving from the riverbank or forever lost downstream.
Dani Larkin – ‘To Be Enough’
Music is fuelled by wanting more. Lust, greed, excess – these tend to be the main offenders. Love and loss get their moment in the spotlight, too. Dani Larkin eschews this with a simple tenderness, one fraught with doubt but ultimately reassured by haunting harmonies and stirring instrumentation. This song is more than enough, and I mean that in the best way possible.
Mitski – ‘Where Is My Phone?’
I haven’t listened to as much Mitski as I perhaps should have, but this song is a great deal of fun. A storm in a teacup, a neurotic on a Vimeo binge. And that censor beep made me chuckle aloud, a first since ‘Bobby Brown (Goes Down)’.
Crooked Fingers ft. Sharon Van Etten – ‘Haunted’
A dip into the electronic for Eric Bachmann, and what a joy it is! Bachmann’s occasional rasp is complemented well by Van Etten, and the arrangement makes me want to dad dance over someone’s grave, kicking the hands that start poking through the sod.
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