And so we slide into the second week of August, with no let up in the avalanche of superior summer tunes being gifted to us. Which is nice.
Before we dive into this week's finest songs, we must first reveal the results of last week's poll. Respect is due to Queens Of The Stone Age, who secured 55% of the vote for their new single Negative Space. The silver medal position was taken by Yungblud, who polled 24% of all votes cast with Lowlife, with Meet Me @ The Altar stepping onto the podium to take the bronze medal after scoring 8.5% of the vote for Take Me Away.
Onto this week's selections, which span the gamut from pop-punk to psych-folk, indie rock to post-hardcore. Don't forget to vote for your favourite below.
Olivia Rodrigo - Bad Idea, Right?
"Seeing you tonight, it's a bad idea, right?" Olivia Rodrigo muses on the second single teasing her much-anticipated second album GUTS, due on September 8, before concluding, against her better judgement, "Fuck it, it's fine."
Announcing bad idea, right? as single two from the follow-up to 2021's six million-selling Sour, Rodrigo promised that it is “pretty different from vampire & shows another side of GUTS that’s a little more fun & playful", and true to her words, it's a raucous, punky and horny celebration of drunken bad decisions, specifically those made late at night while craving the most inappropriate of guilty pleasures, hooking up with an ex. "I only see him as a friend," she insists at one point. "I just tripped and fell into his bed." On the evidence of this - with bonus points for that squiggly guitar solo - and vampire, the 20-year-old Californian has another monster album on her hands.
Creeper - Teenage Sacrifice
Following on from the excellent Cry To Heaven, released back in May, Creeper return with the second single previewing their vampiric new album Sanguivore. Pitched somewhere between Bark At The Moon-era Ozzy Osbourne and My Chemical Romance's The Sharpest Lives, Teenage Sacrifice is another fabulous stadium-goth anthem from one of the UK's most inventive, idiosyncratic and consistently imaginative bands. With a hint of what lies ahead when the album drops on October 13, frontman William Von Ghould says, “The song introduces Mercy, the protagonist of the Sanguivore narrative. She’s deceptively innocent yet savagely violent, and her ability to make people fall under her spell is just one indication that Mercy is not all that she seems.”
Coach Party - Parasite
"What's your secret," spits Coach Party vocalist/bassist Jess Eastwood on the seething Parasite, the heaviest track on the Isle Of Wight quartet's forthcoming Killjoy album. "Why do you feed on us all. I give too much. And I wish I never met you."
"Everyone has those people in their lives that they’ll do anything to avoid," says drummer Guy Page, adding, "If you don’t, you might be one of those people, and this song is for you: the parasite in human form, whose sole purpose on this earth is to drain the energy, creativity and enthusiasm of generous people."
Killjoy is scheduled for a September 8 release on Chess Club Records, and Coach Party are on tour in the UK in September/October.
Blonde Redhead - Before
With their 10th album, Sit Down for Dinner, on the horizon, New York's Blonde Redhead - vocalist/guitarist Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace - remain as uncategorisable as ever, as is evidenced by Before. “Some children seem quite knowing as if they remember their past lives,” says Makino of the band’s dreamy, hazy and gossamer-fine new single. “Or at least that’s the impression I get. The song is a sort of celebration of that kind of quality in a young person.” Sit Down for Dinner, is out on September 29, 2023 on section1.
The Joy Formidable - Cut Your Face
"Cut Your Face is a reminder to myself that even in shyness, when that voice is telling you to hide away, that what I really want is deep, authentic connection," says The Joy Formidable's Ritzy Bryan of the band's first new music since 2021, the art-grunge attack of Cut Your Face. "The only way to satisfy that longing is to be vulnerable, messy and imperfect… and life is all the more beautiful because of it." With lyrics such as "The moonlight has your thoughts and the daybreak wants your body / Everyone’s a little lost in the mirror and hungry" it's an intriguing return. Originally from North Wales, the band now divide their time between Utah and Wales, but will embark upon their first UK tour in four years this autumn, beginning in Glasgow on September 20.
Teenage Fanclub - Back To The Light
Though founding member Gerard Love is no longer involved, Teenage Fanclub keep on keeping on, with no dip in the quality of their songwriting, as proven by this rather lovely second single from the veteran Scottish indie band's forthcoming 12th album Nothing Lasts Forever, due on September 22 via their own label PeMa and Merge Records. “I liked the idea of using being in a band as a metaphor for a personal relationship," says the group's frontman Norman Blake. "They are not entirely dissimilar experiences." As for the album, guitarist Raymond McGinley says, "The record feels reflective, and I think the more we do this thing, the more we become comfortable with going to that place of melancholy, feeling and expressing those feelings."
Goat - Unemployment Office
Having supplied the soundtrack to Shane Meadows' BBC TV series The Gallows Pole, masked Swedish pysch-funk mavericks Goat return in a a mellow, folky mood with Unemployment Office, the first taste of their forthcoming Medicine. The band have likened the sound and feel of their new recordings to classic Swedish '70s psych/prog/folk acts such as Arbete & Fritid, Charlie & Esdor and Träd, Gräs & Stenar, and say of the album, “The impermanence of life in different ways: sickness, relationships, love, death and how our time is finite. For our families, friends, society, this could be done through the use of psychedelics, through meditation, through learning from other people, staying curious and never settling for a ‘solid’ identity."
Wrong Man - Wait
Missing the days when Dischord, Amphetamine Reptile and Touch & Go Records were releasing life-changing records on a monthly basis? Belgium's Wrong Man have got your back. Taken from the forthcoming EP, Big Plans, out on Thirty Something Records (Europe) and Sunday Drive Records (USA) on October 6, Wait is described as for fans of Swiz, The Jesus Lizard and the Rollins Band, and frankly they had us at Swiz. The band will tour Europe with Superbloom in September/October, and with Fiddlehead in February. We'd say 'See you in the pit!' but 'see you at the bar' is more realistic, frankly.
