Welcome to GIITTV’s Tracks Of The Week, a bite-sized guide to some of our favourite fresh songs from the past seven days. Now in its new Sunday home, sit back relax and press play on seven choice cuts of music from this week.
Winston Surfshirt – Same Shirt: Juxtaposing the filthy, sleazy sound of, say, Snoop Dogg or Robin Thicke with the more cerebral kind of pop we associate with the likes of MGMT or Hot Chip, Sydney band Winston Surfshirt‘s ‘Same Same‘ is a quite irresistible chunk of disco influenced electronica that makes you want to dance and hump your dinner guests’ legs in equal measure (I haven’t, in case you were wondering).
DIDI – Back Off: Hertfordshire-based musician, singer, and producer continues along a line of barbed artful punk-pop that can be traced back to Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen and beyond. It is no-frills, no-nonsense and bristles with clattering drums, guitars and a boundless energy that just drives the song along to its final destination.
Xenoula – Chief of Tin: The bouncing, heavy bass beats, elemental synths and imaginative creeping percussive atmosphere of her new single ‘Chief of Tin’ – expertly pieced together by Sam Dust aka LA Priest are both ethereal and sublime. Somehow vaguely reminiscent of Bjork but yet totally individual, whilst Xenoula’s hypnotic vocal refrains are at once mysterious and piercing. “With our wasted air,” she chants before moving into some form of Afrikaans, the sound of someone surveying the unsettling beauty of the world’s landscapes and becoming horrified at the pollution that infects nature’s most wondrous habitats.
Wild Ones -‘Paresthesia’ : Is the cracking recent single from their forthcoming album Mirror Touch. An addictive trip through the feeling of foreboding, of struggling to face love and the world. Lead vocalist Danielle Sullivan’s giddy, almost nursery rhyme couplets hot step through these gleaming evocative pop shudders: bittersweet yet possessing an attitude her delivery is juxtaposed by lyrics ripe with an existential anxiety and foreboding.
Addie Brik – Here Comes The Lover: Skirting the lines between folk-tinged pop that calls to mind The Sundays and the vocal dexterity of early Kate Bush, it’s a beguiling song accompanied by an evocative video directed by Oscar Dunbar featuring deep sea exploration.
OMD -Isotype: Ties your brain into all kinds of meta-knots by sounding futuristic the way Kraftwerk’s The Man Machine still sounds futuristic, whilst bemoaning how the internet has reduced all 21st century thought and communication into simple visuals, memes, emoticons (OMD? OMG!) devoid of nuance.
Susanne Sundfør – Undercover: Striking piano ballad and second single, ‘Undercover’, features the album’s most memorable melody. It’s not an obvious single in the same way as ‘White Foxes’, ‘Fade Away’, and ‘Delirious’. The despair that resonates over the album continues as she sings, “don’t trust the ones who love you, cause if you love them back, they’ll always disappoint you, it’s just a matter of fact”. ‘Undercover’‘s climax is powerful because a choir complements her gorgeous longing voice.
