It’s very to be easy to be down at this stage of the year. It’s March already, Drake’s visit has come and gone, Rihanna hasn’t released an album for like 17 years and we’re waking every morning only to be disappointed that a new Kanye album hasn’t arrived. Here are 10 new songs to make you feel better about mid-March and help you forget about all those resolutions to stop drinking wine under $5 that you’ve already broken numerous times.
Shura
2Shy
London singer Shura has hit the nail on the head four times now with her latest single 2Shy just as good as its predecessors. Funnily enough the song itself is quite shy. Shura is characteristically hushed while its funk undertones hide beneath a bed of washy synths. It creates a warm, twinkling atmosphere that’s bound to push her profile further.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/shura/2shy[/soundcloud]
Grimes
REALiTi
So basically Grimes said this song wasn’t good enough to go on her new album and scrapped it. Then she gave it a video and watched the internet go crazy over the track. Then she tweeted that she’ll “consider for album” but thinks she has better. This is one of the best Grimes tracks we’ve heard for a while so if it’s not good enough for the album then it sounds like she’s cooking up her own Sgt. Pepper. Please feel free to email future songs to me Grimes so I can tell you if they’re good enough. Thanks.
Beat Connection
Illusion
Nothing like ending the week with a bit of funky electro-pop and thanks to Seattle foursome Beat Connection we can do that. The cover for Illusion features two men taking photos of a piece of garbage as if it’s art but this song my friends is not garbage. It’s a crisply produced, smooth pop songs that introduces the band as a potential mainstream crossover.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/beatconnexion/illusion[/soundcloud]
Ben Khan
1000
You may remember Ben Kahn as a new artist who’s horn we tooted a few times last year. 1000 is his latest track and the first we’ve heard from him in 2015 and it once again affirms to us that we were right in tooting his horn. With a bed of synths and beats that would sound at home on a Little Dragon record, Khan lays down his soulful vocals. There are plenty of sounds here to get excited about, particularly the shrieking guitar that’s making my ears very happy right now.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/benkhan/1000bk[/soundcloud]
Hozier
Take Me To Church (Frost Remix)
Hozier’s Take Me To Church is about a million years old now but commercial radio has only just decided that their Kyle and Jackie-championing listeners need to be taken to church. Thanks goodness we have people like Sydney producer FROST who’s willing to give the song a fresh lick of deep-house paint and make the song bearable once again. If people played this shit at church, I’d be there all dayyyyy.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/frostsounds/hozier-take-me-to-church-frost-remix[/soundcloud]
Jam City
Today
When you call yourself Jam City, you’re giving yourself a hard job in that you’re promising the people jams. If you promise the people jams (or jam for that matter) you better deliver. And luckily this Night Slugs producer does. Jam City is making music to dance to but it’s not necessarily music for clubs. Today is throwback pop/RnB with sfumato edges made for slow-grinding rather than fist-pumping. This is the sort of music who exposes all those who have no rhythm when they try to dance to it. In that way Jam City is gifting humanity.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/jam-city/today[/soundcloud]
Tame Impala
Let It Happen
“When it happens/let it happen,” is the mantra of the new Tame Impala song which basically means when you get halfway through your third run of the 8-minute track and think maybe it’s time to stop, ignore rationality. Thanks to Kevin Parker and co we’ve had an incredibly unproductive week and we have this psychedelic pop piece to thank. Some have said this is Tame Impala moving into electronic music but Lonerism was always lying on that bed. Here the synths are just that bit more prevalent and we’ve probably got to get used to the fact that this would be brilliantly euphoric in a club.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/stereogum/let-it-happen[/soundcloud]
Active Child
1999
1999 was a good year. Britney Spears released ...Baby One More Time, J.Lo dropped On The 6 and the public allowed Cher to go to number one with Believe. This song seemingly has nothing to do with all of that but it was a chance to reminisce that I just couldn’t pass on. We’ve waited almost four years for another Active Child album and now we’re finally getting it with Mercy. 1999 is a mournful piece of beauty that sees Pat Grossi’s crystalline falsetto return with a more straight-forward singer/songwriter vibe. As great as the experimentalism on You Are All I See was, this is something super special.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/active-child/mercy-1999[/soundcloud]
Sufjan Stevens
Should Have Known Better
For a while it seemed like we’d lost singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens to the dark, evil world of electronic music. On his latest album Carrie & Lowell he’s returned to his humble roots with an acoustic sound that grabs everyone’s heart and places it straight in their throat. Should Have Known Better is recount of his early memories with his late mother. It’s a heartbreaking tale of his mother leaving him in a video store at the age of three or four. Unbelievably Stevens manages to introduce some shred of life with a warming keyboard-line in the latter parts of the song which beautifully describes his brothers new-born daughter and a new reason to look forward - “the beauty that she brings/ Illumination.”
Thandi Phoenix
Judgement (Feat. B Wise)
This may sound like a sassy RnB track from the turn of the millenium but check the timestamp and I promise you you’ll find it’s from 2014. Thandi Phoenix is a singer from Sydney who’s collaborated with everyone from Ta-Ku to Coin Banks. This is the kind of thing that Rihanna would have lapped up on her Music Of The Sun debut with island vibes complemented by club-ready synths. B Wise’s distinctly Australian rap is a good way to give it a sense of identity. Australia has soul scene that Phoenix is ready to expose.
[soundcloud width="750" height="200"]https://soundcloud.com/thandiphoenix/judgement-thandi-phoenix-ft-b-wise[/soundcloud]
