Happy Monday! We've new music ready and waiting to find your ear holes and boost your post-weekend mood, everything from sultry alt-pop perfect for the dance floor and songs for watching the world go by.
Before we get ahead of ourselves however, last week's results are in, and we need to take a moment to congratulate our winners.
Taking home the gold with 37.33% of the votes was Whores, with their riff-packed noisey rager Quitter's Fight Song, followed by The Jesus and Mary Chain's Chemical Animal, their sedate new single responsible for 25.33% of the overall listener vote. And in third place, was Kim Gordon's shopping-list style piece of art pop Bye Bye, securing the favour of 12% of you.
To have your say in who deserves to win from this week's selection, cast your vote below.
Nadine Shah - Greatest Dancer
This perturbing new single by British singer-songwriter Nadine Shah has semi-mundane roots, inspired by the lockdown Saturday nights spent with her late mother watching Strictly Come Dancing, the experience intensified through the use of stolen prescription medication. The eerie restlessness of the time period is immediately traceable, the unease heightened through the scampering rhythm and dense synth, as well as its accompanying Niall Trask-directed video, featuring string puppets re-enacting Shah’s drug-disturbed memories. Goosebumps may rise…
Arab Strap - Bliss
Will there be a better album title this year than I’m Totally Fine With It 👍 Don’t Give a Fuck Anymore 👍, Arab Strap’s forthcoming follow up to 2021’s superb As Days Get Dark? Time will tell. Its first single is a sober, despairing meditation on the abuse and harassment that women are forced to endure online, with a pulsing electronic beat and lyrics that cut typically deep. “The knives are sharpened, pistols drawn, the boys warm up and flex their brawn,” sings Aidan Moffat. “Soon hearts are broken, points are scored – it’s just some banter when they’re bored.” Arab Strap promise that the album will contain more “quiet anger”: feel-good vibes are highly unlikely to feature.
Pillow Queens - Gone
Fuzzed-out, slack guitars and coolly casual vocals capture an unbothered mood on Gone - lifted from Pillow Queens' forthcoming third album Name Your Sorrow - as co-lead vocalists Sarah Corcoran and Pamela Connolly interweave the resolute line ‘I’m gone, I’m someone else’s problem’. Connolly adds, “Lines like, ‘I was in your top five things to do’ convey a lack of self-worth that’s tackled throughout the album. It’s a song that showcases a vulnerability that allows for no silver linings – it’s the reality of how someone is feeling in the moment.”
Franker Turner - Do One
Frank Turner serves the first taste of his newly-announced album Undefeated in the form of Do One, an upbeat 'fuck you' to his detractors, which finds him singing: “I’m still standing up and there’s nothing you can do”.
“Do One is the last song I wrote for the new album, and the first song on that album, as well as the first single,” he says. “So it’s a summation of what I’m trying to say with this record, a record about survival and defiance, but also one with a sense of fun and self-deprecation. 19 years into my solo career, I’m still standing up and putting out some of my best work. It feels good.”
Brittany Howard - Prove It To You
Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard serves up a platter of steamy euphoria and fluttering eyes on this late night club-closer, its pop-vogueing beat and sultry vocals conjuring scenes of spilt drinks, and inebriated revellers pressed together under dimly-lit pulsing lights. As she explains, it’s “a fun four-on-the-floor dance track that makes you want to dance but at the same time lyrically looks at the complexities of being in a relationship”.
Squid - Fugue (Bin Song)
"Bin Song is now out of the bin!” Squid say, pulling a gem from their recent archives. Recorded with Speedy Wunderground owner / super-producer Dan Carey at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio in spring 2022, this regular fixture in Squid’s live sets failed to make the cut for last year’s fine O Monolith album, but has been re-purposed, remixed and edited by Tortoise's John McEntire, who the Brighton band credit for “adding some magic.” It’s a typically slippery tune, with chiming guitars from the early 90’s US underground scene, punk-funk rhythms and a post-punk vocal delivery combining in sweetly disorienting fashion.
Yungblud - When We Die (Can We Still Get High?) [feat. Lil Yachty]
Float off into the cosmos via this drug-fuelled retrospective new single reminiscent of noughties Brit pop ballads, courtesy of Doncaster alt-pop sensation Yungblud and US rapper Lil Yachty. A song for cloud-watching, sun-soaked cigarette-smoking afternoons, peace-sign-hoisting hippies and wistful listeners looking for a momentary blissful escape.
Speaking of the collab, the vocalist says: “Me and Yachty have been talking since 2019 and I’ve always thought we were on the same trip – fuck the rules, push things forward. So, when I wrote the song I knew he’d add something amazing. I wanted this moment to be a collision of each other’s imagination and sound. I’m really excited about it and for what it could potentially inspire between the future of alternative and hip-hop. Press play.”
LINDY-FAY HELLA & DEI FARNE - Whisper
Norwegian duo Lindy-Fay Hella (Wadruna) and Dei Farne supply stylishly gothic electronica on this new single from their forthcoming full-length Islet, due out on March 8 via Norse. Jaunty percussion and buzzing bass propel this track into perplexing territories, before an enlivening chorus of heavily-layered breathy vocals and scuttling drum machines sculpt a wondrous piece of 80s goth cut with a semi-industrial edge.
