“Temps” is one giant, melodic, shoegazey tornado, all fat sad synth, and crying guitar twang spinning together under neon lights. And it features a positively monumental vocal from Harriet Joseph that’s sure to get you dizzy if you play it loudly. Utterly swoon-worthy and special.
Maria Kelly featuring Ailbhe Reddy “Threads”
A gorgeous collaboration/duet from 2 amazing artists in their own respective rights, “Threads” is the perfect evocation of complete and utter misery, which is to say, yes, it’s that good. All lopsided love, wasted hope and dust enveloped in delicate acoustics and distant playground sounds and…it’s just grim…yet utterly addictive and beautiful at the same time. It’s that old painful wisdom nugget in song form i.e. the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Not a million miles from the fine Jessica Lea Mayfield in tone and timbre, it may take a couple of listens to succumb to it’s fragile airiness, but once you give in, it’ll stay with you for real.
Weekly New Wonders Playlist !
Each week we assemble 2 playlists of what are meant to be the same tracks on Soundcloud and Spotify so you can listen where it’s most convenient…but this is one of those weeks where I’d recommend listening to the Soundcloud one because there are about 6 more songs there than are on the Spotify list ( they are tracks that are not yet available on Spotify).
No pressure but the missing tracks are really freakin’ good and don’t want you to miss anything…but leaving the decision in your hands…now go rock yourself.
Soundcloud:
Spotify:
Floor Eight “Plan H”
Okay, not sure what the hell this is. One minute it’s Steely Dan. The next Queen. Then suddenly, and I do mean suddenly, it’s Alice in Chains. Then it’s all of them at once. Basically it’s a song that’s ingested far more sugar than anyone should have in a day. The vocal is whiny, petulant and over the top, and there are about a billion hooks…and it’s ridiculously awesome. You’ve been warned.
Tégui “Picasso” ( prod.Psycho)
Transportive, sinewy and slinky R & B, with a warm and beautiful vocal, and some chilly synth washes that instantly brought to mind Ryuichi Sakamoto’s finer moments ( think his “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence soundtrack). Tégui also serves up a sweet spoken word break that triggered another 80’s memory, that being Grace Jones’s sublime declaration within her own classic “Slave to the Rhythm”. This is one gorgeous rainy day of a song, an absolute beauty.
Steegs “Come Through”
Up to this point Steegs has made her name via some killer covers, everything from JT’s”SexyBack” to The Cure’s “Lovesong” to St.Vincent’s “Los Ageless”, blues-ing the crap out of them with her gigantic, emotive voice while playing some pretty bitchin’ guitar but this, her debut single, is in a another universe entirely. “Come Through” is a fierce hybrid of Garbage, Britney Spears, and Depeche Mode’s “In Your Room”. It’s weird, cynical, epic pop candy with some ballsy guitar riffing on the bottom and yes, hard to evict from your head once you’ve been exposed to it. The song’s refrain goes “Chase the things I’ll never get, and he’s the reason I’m depressed”. Fuck yeah.
Why Bonnie “Practice”
Out of Austin and into your heart, Why Bonnie offer up some homespun wisdom in this faded pop snapshot. A laid back groove enveloped in gently chiming guitar, and featuring one sweet little chorus, Why Bonnie remind us there’s no wasted time, it’s all practice. This is off the new EP ‘In Water” and it is exceptionally handsome. It’s also reminiscent of a wonderful sleeper from back in 2004 by A Girl Called Eddy which we are gonna recommend as well ( see below).
While we’re here, might as well share another track off the aforementioned EP, the jangling and sentimental “Made of Paper” which is also pretty fine:
And if you feel like going back in time, check out A Girl Called Eddy for more glorious chime:
Weekly New Wonders Playlist !
Welcome to this week’s New Wonders. We’ve been inundated with cool stuff this year, no doubt about it. Gonna write about/single out a couple of these tracks in next day or so, but in the meantime, indulge in everything. You can listen on Soundcloud and/or Spotify: we’ve got you covered. Live it up…
Soundcloud :
Spotify:
Johann Johannsson 1969-2018
I discovered Johann Johannsson by complete accident. It was 2008, and I was working in the buying department at Virgin Megastore in New York City. We’d just gotten the usual box of promotional cds, and forthcoming releases. And I did the usual thing, putting them on one after the other, mechanically listening for anything with sales potential and all that. One of those cds was Johann’s Fordlandia. It blew my mind. It obliterated everything I’d played before it. It was classical, but it wasn’t classical music. It was as melodic as pop, but it wasn’t pop music. All I knew was that I couldn’t wait to get it home and hear it on headphones.
I excitedly told my co-worker Marvin about this new discovery and upon hearing it, he too became completely obsessed . We soon embarked on a mission to hear/own everything Johann had released; it was absolute love. And so when his first U.S. tour was announced in 2009, including a date at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC, we had no choice: we had to be there.
It was June 25, 2009, a gloomy, rain-sodden and humid evening. While standing in line to get in, to finally see Johann, the door guy offhandedly mentioned to me that Michael Jackson had died. This was staggering and shocking, and at that moment impossible to fully absorb. And now I was about to go into this dark room and hear Johann Johannsson play some of the saddest, most epic music on the planet. Music, that more often than not, I’d tended to use to soundtrack the darkest of times.
It was a pretty weird emotional experience. Thinking about Michael, and my own internal rubbish simultaneously while listening to this otherworldly sound.
The show was brilliant and just cemented how important Johann and his music were going to be to me, for what I knew would be a long time to come.
Marvin and I were now officially “fan girl & boy” keeping tabs on releases and collecting Johann catalogue in all formats. And in keeping with our mania, went to see him again at LPR in 2010. In the lobby was a small merch table. And in the empty lobby, behind the merch table was Johann himself. Looking shy and unassuming. There he was trying to make change for me after I’d bought a cd. “You know I’m going to ask you to sign this now”, I smiled at him, and again he shyly smiled back and obliged. And then he went onstage and conducted and played the most beautiful and heart-wrenching music you’re ever going to hear.
I only realize now how fortunate we were to experience him at that time in such a small place.
And so Johann died today. Only 48 years old. And I’m writing this only having heard about it like 20 minutes ago. Just crying…because this guy was such a genius and so incredibly gifted, and created music that’ll be beautiful for as long as the earth is turning.
There’s so much to recommend but for the sake of brevity, wanted to share a little homemade “best of” playlist below to get you better acquainted if you haven’t explored his work. It’s pretty subjective of course, as in it doesn’t feature any of the mega film soundtracks Johann has done over the past few years, but I think it’s his best stuff; it will all take you somewhere far away. What a genius.
Weekly New Wonders Playlist !
Here are the new playlists (plus a bonus pin-up of super hot D.Bowie just because)! Lotta stuff, like a whole lot, and sigh, we are just spoiled for choice right now. Anyway, it’s the usual drill: there are 2 playlists, Soundcloud and Spotify and as of this writing the Soundcloud list has a few more songs because they are not yet on Spotify…but you can’t go wrong either way. Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out….
Soundcloud Playlist:
Spotify Playlist:
PICKING UP ROCKS 