PICKING UP ROCKS

Urgent, frantic, but also romantic in it’s exultation of the word ‘radio” as in the old school, “the radio is my lifeline” way, which is pretty damn romantic. Anyhow, this is a true power pop anthem, and could possibly make your heart explode.

An ecstatic Go-Go’s/Bangles/60’s girl group hybrid, set to a motorik-krautrock beat ( no really),  this is pop of the highest order, and in a perfect world, at this very moment, it is blasting from a radio in a pink convertible rolling defiantly down the Pacific Coast Highway, and not looking back.

Holy sheez, the guitar on this is sticky, and lethal, and pretty impossible to evict from your head once it’s introduced itself. The whole song sits close to both Sleater-Kinney, and the year of 1994, and will spit in your eye and walk away, and you’ll like it.

While it’s a pretty common thing in hip hop for artists to reference themselves by name in songs, it’s not that often you hear it in a rock song…okay, you know where this is going. Vivienne Chi’s new song is called, yup, “Vivienne”, and it’s a little rollercoaster. It’s all about those inner voices telling you what to do, guiding you or misguiding you, and goes from quiet to loud and back again, whilst  flirting openly with Kate Bush…and there’s something indescribably special about it.

Now don’t be scared but this is a power ballad, possessing the requisite booming vocal, and gigantic tune…but it’s topic is bigger than the standard “I miss you”, or “I’m leaving this town”, you get in those kinds of things 99% of the time. It’s touching upon knowing someone in this life, and feeling like you’ve already experienced the same situations with them in another time, place, or astral plane. And feeling that what’s happening now isn’t a singular stand alone experience. And then wondering what the future holds with all that, and if there’s an ultimate resolution to the connection. Yes, pretty heavy…but know what, at the end of the day, this is one big fat tune, and singer Devin Davis tears it up vocally, and it just kicks ass, so go on and hold it to your heart.

Twin Weaver are a 4 piece band out of Capetown, South Africa, and this song is many, many, many things. It’s post punk. It’s twee. It’s krautrock. It’s the Breeders. All of this at the same time, and all the more wonderful for it.

This is not a song, it’s a living, breathing, sneering, sarcastic babe wandering confusedly yet confidently through the night. It’s punk ( Slits), it’s pop ( Lily Allen kinda), and just bitchin’.

Ooh, this is no joke, it’s just a beauteous, earnest, and 90’s all over R & B ballad, with a couple of watery, shaky vocal moments, that’ll completely stick to your heart. The vocal brings to mind the sensuous crooning of diva Chante Moore, while the song itself is reminiscent of Marsha ( Floetry) Ambrosius’s finest stuff. And so tonight we’re gonna cry like it’s 1993.