Saturday, February 06, 2016

Feel good hits of the 6th February

10. 'We Can Do What We Want' - Drenge
There's more than a bit of a Clockwork Orange vibe to the video for the first single from Drenge's second album Undertow.

9. 'Saltes Of Humane Dust' - Haikai No Ku
From Newcastle, deep psych for melting ears and scrambling brains. For when the likes of White Manna just aren't quite enough.

8. 'Silver Hands' - Bummer Vacation
Slacker shoegaze that, while largely unremarkable, has at least helped to whet the appetite for the new DIIV record.

7. 'Temporary Secretary' - Paul McCartney
As recommended by my friend Brian, who stumbled across it and was for a while convinced it must by by a contemporary hipster synthpop outfit who'd chosen their band name as a prank. Not that the track is exactly an undiscovered gem - it was rated the 167th best song of all time by NME writers. It finally got a debut live performance at the O2 Arena last year - a mere 35 years after its first appearance on McCartney II.

6. 'Chemical Reaction/Chemical Delight' - Destruction Unit
Your album's called Negative Feedback Resistor (a follow-up to 2013's Deep Trip), is released on Sacred Bones and is a blur of metal, punk and psych? To be honest, Destruction Unit, you had me at hello.

5. 'Disintegration Anxiety' - Explosions In The Sky
This taster of The Wilderness, the successor to 2011's Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, is everything that a seasoned Explosions In The Sky fan would want - except for the fact that it's too damn short. (As an aside, I had no idea that both they and Godspeed You! Black Emperor had supported Nine Inch Nails on an arena tour in the US and Canada in 2013 - hats off to Trent Reznor for inviting them along.)

4. 'The Plain Moon' - The Besnard Lakes
The Jagjaguwar sticker affixed to the front of A Coliseum Complex Museum, The Besnard Lakes' fifth full-length offering, describes the Montreal outfit as "purveyors of technicolor landscape rock". Who am I to argue?

3. 'Whitest Boy On The Beach' - Fat White Family
How, you wondered, could Fat White Family be any more provocative? By naming the lead single for their second album Songs For Our Mothers 'Whitest Boy On The Beach', and by accompanying it with a video that features suicide hotspot Beachy Head, torture, head-shaving and lots of meat, perhaps? Yes - but the fact that the track pays a curious sort of homage to disco is the most sick and twisted aspect of all. (If you've not yet made their acquaintance, here's a helpful introduction.)

2. 'Adore' - Savages
Arguably the strongest track of the quartet's second album Adore Life, a slow-burner that builds to a pretty epic climax. I can't be alone in loving the all-too-brief Smiths-esque sweep of the chorus, surely? (Adore Life was, incidentally, our featured album on the first episode of the Sounding Bored podcast, which you can hear here.)

1. 'No End' - Low
Believe me, it's really saying something when, approximately 30 seconds into my first exposure to 'No End', I was more than happy to acclaim it as one of Low's very best songs. The only disappointment is that it doesn't have the epic coda it's crying out for, a la 'Broadway (So Many People)' on The Great Destroyer. Still, I suppose the behemoth 'Landslide' later on Ones And Sixes does, and I should just be satisfied with that.

3 comments:

skif said...

Temporary Secretary makes me think "God this is terrible but I LOVE it" every single time. I was introduced to it by Micachu & The Shapes - who covered it as an encore at the Scala a few years back. I too believed they were mucking around when they described it as a McCartney track. But then you Google...

Ben said...

So they played it live before the man himself did! Incidentally, what's the recent Micachu stuff like? I only have the first album, which I liked but didn't love.

skif said...

The latest is quite scrappy but I guess twas ever thus. I feel about the latest how you felt about the first.