Category: New Music Reviews

Okay for a couple of seconds this caused Locals H’s 1996 hit “Bound for the Floor” to re-enter my consciousness ( honestly, the title of that song should be officially changed to “The Copacetic Song” at this point, since that’s what everyone calls it because no one can ever remember the real title…including me, I had to look it up). Anyway, it kind of sounded like that, until it didn’t. The melody made a hairpin turn, and everything started to swirl and make me dizzy. The vocal is literally an echo and is nearly smothered by a woozy, whining, power-pop guitar. There are “oohs” and “ahhhhhs”…and it’s just, well it could make you sigh and truly forget the world for a minute ( especially if you play it loud). It’s off the forthcoming album, “The Hood”, which is out in 2 weeks, and this is a blessed omen i.e. judging by this, sounds like it’s gonna be good.

This is everywhere today but it’s just so damn good that I really wanted to feature it here. Wrapped in the sunniest of chorus’s, and fattest of chords, “Cool” makes judgement, desire, and jealousy sound pretty damn heavenly. It’s as melodically gorgeous and incisive as anything off babe/genius Juliana Hatfield’s early 90’s albums ( she who specialized in this kind of sound and sentiment back in the day), which is a real achievement, I’m telling you. After about 2 1/2 minutes, the whole song literally melts  and passes out in the sun. Perfect. Debut album lands in March, and yes, it will be very,very good.

And hey, here’s a some completely awesome Juliana Hatfield circa 1992 to play next 🙂

It takes mere seconds for this lush, jangling freight train to get rolling, and once it does it just don’t stop. In other words, it’s very easy to envision 100’s of bobbing heads absolutely losing their shiz to “Life in the Dust”. Spike’s sweet and anxious vocal lands somewhere between Jeffrey Lee Pierce of wonderful 80’s renegades Gun Club, and Tom Verlaine of Television: it’s as muscular as the guitar it thunders along with, never wavering, just crushing. The debut album is out in February and okay, gonna say it, forgive me, but play it loud.

As of this writing Londoner James Bakian is 14 years old. And hearing how accomplished and pop music perceptive “Know You” is will probably make you want to go back in time and confront your lazy 14 year old self and say, “why couldn’t you be as focused and ridiculously creative as James ? You disappoint me. Get out of here, I can’t even look at you”. Anyway, the song itself is sparse and skeletal and has a bit of a demo-ish quality to it i.e. it’s basically a heartbeat with James’s angelic and fluttery falsetto floating on top. It’s also in possession of a really handsome hook and, I’m telling you now, is better than anything on the last Sam Smith album. Nice one James.

“Fall…”is a woozy synth-pop lament brazenly bathed in a Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” sheen, that also brings to mind Ariel Pink at his absolute sweetest and, gonna get deep here, Paul McCartney’s epic 1971 summer sundown album track “Back Seat of My Car”, which is as high a compliment as we can pay. Lush and desperate and definitely swoon-worthy.

An empowering tornado with a million hooks, sounding like a hundred high school marching bands playing at once, where every guitar is turned up to 11, and featuring a vocal that I swear, and I know this’ll sound weird, reminded me of Merrill Garbus of Tuneyards. It all adds up to some truly embraceable melodic noise…and any song whose first line is “I am the patron saint of disappointment” could only be good.

Okay, Tracey is telling a story here, but I want to make the obvious out of context reference that everyone will, which is that Tracey is a freakin’ Queen, in that she has been responsible for some truly transcendent pop music over the past 30+ years, and is one of the greatest voices ever…okay sorry… had to do that, I’ll calm down now, it’s just that I really love her…actually in this song, you, me, and all of us are the potential/could’ve been “Queen” in question. A swirling electropop anthem, all about the “what if’s ” in life, or rather, a celebration of that eternal question, “where the hell would I be now if I’d…?”. It’s the theme song for all the mind wrestling and mental grappling we do every day, has a proper pop chorus that sticks to the walls and doesn’t come off, is off her forthcoming album “Record”, out March 2nd, and is pretty glorious.

Had never heard of of these guys, out of Ashland, Nebraska, until a couple of days ago, yet here they are with my current # 1 most played (roughly a gazillion times) track this week. It’s simultaneously dark and infectious, and has a bit of an alternative 90’s vibe, which asserts itself most prominently in Mari Crisler’s vocal: deep, and flat and perfect, and somewhere in between Liz Phair and, on the more recent tip, Ophelia Booth of Bloxx : it’s every bit as powerful as the bed of fat, melodic guitar that gloriously surrounds it.

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It sucks to be wrong… and with that please enjoy some truly handsome and soulful angst, regret, hindsight and hopefully erasure, courtesy of Serena Richelle. The vocal here is mighty fine, and the whole feel is reminiscent of a couple of Class A, sad electro tear stained classics from the late 90’s, namely “6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps, and “Blood Red Tears” by Olive, which is no mean feat.

Come on along as Willows, aka Ariel Rodriguez, takes us on a truly epic journey. “It’s Always You” is a rattling, perilous freight train one minute, and a spare skeletal ballad the next, the last 30 seconds sounding literally like 2 songs playing at once… and good lord, if it doesn’t somehow sound completely glorious. Anyhow, this one is a bit of an all-star game, as in a lot of teams are represented, as in you can’t really attach a singular tag to it : it’s intermittently math, then power pop, then emo ( synth pop even makes a cameo appearance, seriously) and it’s basically all of them pogoing together in the same room. And a nod of praise to the raw and lustrous guest vocal from Ran.feri which lands somewhere between Nothing and Fucked Up, and is just kind of perfect .