I’m feeling kinda basic today. Top 10 Track 1 Side 1. Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana, the album is Nevermind. Thanks Kurt. What are yours? I don’t know if any of these will be the first song on an album, but they could be. Zingers the lot of them. Dig deep. Stare down your demon. Relax in cool calm waters. And the rest is silence.
Sinkane – Come Together
Why we love it: because ‘Come Together’ is a euphoric clarion call to unity and shared human experience. The song is taken from Sinkane’s new album We Belong which was released on Friday through City Slang. The Sudanese-American musician has described the album – his eighth in total but first in five years – as a “love letter to Black music” and ‘Come Together’ most certainly conveys that depth of feeling on his part. Here Sinkane fuses soul, funk, electronics, and pop into an anthemic, freewheeling message to love. (Simon Godley)
Big Special – Black Dog/White Horse
Why we love it: Big Special share new single ‘Black Dog / White Horse’ the latest from their debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues, which is set for release on 10 May via SO Recordings. This song continues to showcase the combination of Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums), the result here being both dramatic and thought-provoking. The lyrics of this band are at the very core of their being and so it is here, juxta positioning depression named as Black Dog with the hope and freedom of White Horse. These are blended with an instrumentation which pulls at the emotions. Rhythmically the pace reflects a chain gang or the hits of a blacksmith, laboured and constant.
On the new single Joe explains:
“BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE is about fear, about rumination, intrusive thoughts and cycles of depression. It’s about trying to figure out how to reach out when feelings of guilt and shame take hold. It’s about recognising these things in others, noticing the lost and undervalued, and their increasing numbers.
It comes from a thing I wrote years ago, about a burning snake traveling in the hot sun and a small wren flying high above it to block the heat and give it shade, taking the burden of the sun, because the little bird loves the snake and won’t see it defeated, for whatever reason.”
The duo are currently on tour and have an extensive list of gigs scheduled throughout the next few months. Do see them live if you can. Postindustrial Hometown Blues promises to be an album which offers no answers but as the band themselves share:
“is just an honest expression of a working-class experience in modern England through the eyes of ill mental health, a pursuit of art and political disenchantment; a story of rumination, realisation and reaction.” (Julia Mason)
Dirty Three – Love Changes Everything Part I
Why we love it: because, just as we have come to expect, Dirty Three are right yet again. Love Changes Everything. Giving its name to the title of their upcoming album, the sentiments hold true. And the first taste of the new record comes crashing out of the electric storm of Anna White’s accompanying video in the form of ‘Love Changes Everything I.’ It is the first of six pieces that will comprise Love Changes Everything, the album.
Mick Turner’s guitar splinters and squalls over which Warren Ellis’s viola bursts into molecular parts. Jim White joins the reunion and his syncopated drumming drives the Dirty Three vehicle ever forwards. After a 12 year absence, man it is so good to have these guys back. (Simon Godley)
Lip Critic – In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)
Why we love it: ‘In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)‘, is the latest single from New York City’s Lip Critic. Instructions are simple. Play. It. Loud. What a glorious racket this is. Frantic, feral, furious percussion sets out as a rave for punks but this soon morphs into hardcore techno before shifting gear as it races to the outro. At just under two and a half minutes the end comes too quickly, the expectation is that there is more to come, so this listener has no option but to hit the peat button. The accompanying video follows a band as they raid their label’s offices to reclaim their music. Lip Critic share that ‘In The Wawa (Convinced I Am God)’ is: “an inquisition into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption.”
It’s the latest single to be taken from Lip Critic’s debut album Hex Dealer which is out on 17 May via Partisan Records. On the evidence of this song there is no doubt that the album will be a completely unpredictable ride in sonic chaos. Bring. It. On. (Julia Mason)
Hollows – Talons
Why we love it: Hollows have released their new single ‘Talons’. The alternative rock 3-piece based in Manchester deliver a track full of impassioned sentiment. The vocal of Sean Davies (also guitarist) is accompanied by the thunderous drums of Dan Dyson and pounding bass of Jack Barnes. Together they have created a soaring track with ‘Talons’. Lyrically it reflects on distorted memories of past relationships where we can subconsciously dismiss the negative. The theme is perfectly encapsulated in the instrumentation, as the power of our emotions is expressed not with melancholy but frustration, perhaps realising this is unrealistic but those gripping memories are so difficult to shake off.
The band share the following on the single: “’Talons’ is about memories of past relationships but more so about how subconsciously we choose to only remember the happy moments with the person we loved. As people we sometimes filter out the bad without meaning to and the memory of those people keeps a hold of us, like talons digging in.” (Julia Mason)
Megan Black – Funk For Introverts
Why we love it: Megan Black has fused 70’s rock influences with hip-hop, soul, pop and funk on new single ‘Funk for Introverts’. Megan uses her voice to express her own experience of neurodivergence and navigating a world where she will never be able to please everyone. It’s a universal theme that we can all suffer from, whatever your walk of life. The pressure to fit in can override the freedom to be our true selves. Megan combines blues rock with queer feminist pop and yet here she demonstrates such versatility. Just listen to that sung section about two-thirds in. ‘Funk for Introverts’ then resumes its path of travel, reminding us all to be aware of our differences, because that is what keeps us together.
The song was produced by BBC Scotland’s ‘Artist of the Year’ runner-up Scott Bathgate. And Stevie Nicks if you’re reading this, Megan is free to support you at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on 6 July. (Julia Mason)
How To Dress Well – Crypt Sustain
Why we love it: because the inside is where the details are. We know this because Tom Krell tells us as much in the opening line of ‘Crystal Sustain’, one of two new singles released last week by How To Dress Well. And just in case more proof were needed, How To Dress Well has been the LA-based musician’s solo project for the past 15 years and more so he should know what he is talking about.
‘Crystal Sustain’ and ‘nothingprayer’ came out simultaneously to promote the upcoming release of How To Dress Well’s next album, I Am Toward You which will see the full light of day on the 10th of May via Sergant House.
For its part ‘Crystal Sustain’ is “about the cryptic origin of all artmaking, about my (Tom Krell’s) art and my brother’s art work” and it comes to us drenched in a blizzard of guitars and electronics in the midst of which Krell delivers his informed reflections upon matters of neurodivergence and human expression. ‘Crystal Sustain’’s creative devil lies in its delightful detail. (Simon Godley)
em koko – Take me as I am
Why we love it: ‘Take me as I am’ is the debut single from em koko meditating on acceptance and safety, underpinned by a drum machine beat and throbbing baselines, layered synths and nagging guitars its a enveloping and detailed atmosphere that taps into emotional depths and liminal in-between spaces of the early online world. Koko’s delivery is dissonantly cool and burns with emotive introspection, yet ripples with a strength, command and self discovery. Redolent of early Cocteau Twins shimmering against elements of industrial shoegaze that conjures up the work of Warpaint or DIVV. The multitalented em koko found her footing in Abergavenny and played bass and synth for leading South Wales musicians Alice Low and Minas. Her debut single has the artist putting that bass and synth expertise right at the fore “communicating dissociated messages of strength and encouragement from beyond the liminal veil of the electronic mainframe.” (Bill Cummings)
