I’m back. Not for the first time, sorry for the silence: it’s partly due to this still being a shitty period in my private life, and also just because I’ve been stupidly busy with other journalism, job applications, weddings and work. I don’t want this to be a blog where I go quiet for huge gaps and then apologise for various reasons, though; in the end, I need to try harder. And will. (All that being said, I am away on a holiday soon…)
Anyway, here’s the first Monday Music for a month or so – five songs that I’m currently seduced by, without the otherwise obligatory London focus:
Violens – Acid Reign
Sounding more UK 80s pop with each deadpan verse, Jorge Elbrecht and his Violens gang (long hailed as MGMT’s heirs) are cranking their electro stylings up a notch, a la Yeasayer. This one mixes the aforementioned retro tone with some serious dance hooks in the chorus, making for what wanky City boys would call “a proper banger”. And they’d be right.
Florence & The Machine – Cosmic Love (Short Club Mix)
For once the joy isn’t so much Flo and her fly voice, but the saintly sweetness of her latest’s remix. Full of frothy keyboard quirks soft as jacuzzi pumps and blessed with a generally spaced-out, unhurried vibe, it’s a song that smacks of long summer dog days and those last delightful dregs of lost, lush weekends. Blissful it be.
Tobacco – Six Royal Vipers
On Saturday I went to a wedding and it was great: a happy couple, top-notch speeches, illicit joints, all the good stuff. Trouble was, it was in Edinburgh, and that meant a five-hour, spaced-out train journey back south. Fields, seas, trees and towns whistled by; my vision blurred and mind floated, lost in zonky memories. Tobacco‘s pop, fierce and soft like a kind of musical acupuncture, was the perfect tranquiliser.
Bambara – Stay Gray
This one’s wild and guttural, as if it’s the uncensored sound of a broken heart, or pure emotional alcohol let wild in a studio. Gradually and woozily it climbs, as if Bambara‘s singer is stuck in a square room and getting increasingly frustrated, increasingly panic-stricken and pugnacious. Eventually he resorts to full-pitched, throaty bellows, seemingly at the edge of reason.
School Of Seven Bells – Windstorm
Everyone from the Sunday Times to SOIWT is jerking themselves empty over NYC’s School of Seven Bells, excitingly containing two identical – and identically hot – female twins. Windstorm sees them singing over each other, with a backing track adding glossy euphoria and minimalist guitar hooks lending a arty feel.
MP3s via the song titles