The playlist: indie – Braids, Chastity Belt, Tame Impala and more
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Version 0 of 1. The Big Moon – Sucker London-based band the Big Moon told the NME recently that the unlikely event of a Fat White Family gig was the impetus behind their first flourish of songwriting. Debut single Sucker has less of the gnarly, self-medicated weirdness of the psyche group but that anarchy is buried in spirit: Sucker has all the ramshackle romance of the Libertines as it swings its limbs and slurs away as if serenading at the front door of an ex. You can get your hands on Juliette, Soph, Celia and Fern’s very first track on 15 June through new independent label Hard Up. Chastity Belt – Drones If the name smacks slightly of a self-righteous slam poet, you’ll be pleased to discover that Julia Shapiro, Gretchen Grimm, Lydia Lund and Annie Truscott make spooky slacker rock and shoegaze. That’s not to say Drones is mindless stoner rock, however. The Seattle DIY band pay tribute to writer Sheila Heti on this new single, with Shapiro’s despondent, defiant vocals adding a chill to the melancholic melody. This track is lifted from the followup to their debut album, No Regerts, entitled Time to Go Home, which was recorded in a deconsecrated church and former sail factory in Anacortes, Washington State, and sounds eerily lofty for it. Braids – Warm Like Summer The fidgety, jazz-inflected percussion featured on Radiohead’s The King of Limbs, the spacial sadness of Dummy-era Portishead, a little bit of Tori Amos’s ethereal spirit on vocals – Warm Like Summer is a highlight of the Canadian group’s new album, Deep in the Iris. Touching on themes such as pornography, abuse and slutshaming, the deceptively titled track is probably not one for your Spotify Summer Bangers playlist. “Go lay under another,” sings Raphaelle Standell-Preston, “Feels warm like summer.” Tame Impala – Disciples Psyche revivalist Kevin Parker dropped this new track in the least retro-fetishist format ever – a Reddit Ask Me Anything. The song is the latest taste of new album Currents, and is about a spurned lover whose jealousy and resentment weaves in and out of groovy pool-party synths and guitars. Not only is it tantalisingly short, but I love how this flicks from lo-fi to hi-fi with the click of a switch, a merging of the past and present like lost tapes remastered for a fresh new sound. Outfit – On the Water on the Way Liverpool’s Outfit release their second album Slowness in June, and this new single is a good insight into the eerie stillness that lurks within the rest of the record. Written about a culture of apathy that the band feel they’ve grown up in, I like how this song balances the tense with the serene, the keys recalling a little bit of (third-era) Portishead, rubbing up incongruously next to Andrew Hunt’s vocals, as soft and croonery as a lounge singer in a pink ruffle shirt. Finally, the real highlight of this month in indie rock music has been Mac DeMarco’s trailer for his new mini-album. |