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Ibeyi: Ash

Article Originally appeared on The Music Sep 25th 2017

Singing in mixed English, French and Yoruba, Ibeyi have a unique voice, but their position as a potential voice for an ostensibly outsider perspective and the dignified potency they wield it with makes them distinct. Ash is both persecuted and powerful in equal measure, something that feels less like balancing than soaring. Sparse and otherworldly percussion interspersed with found sounds and hypnotic harmonics, it’s sonically sumptuous but thematically sharp enough to cut you from the first chord. This isn’t just good music, it’s important.

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Kitty, Daisy & Lewis: Superscope

Article originally appeared on The Music Sep 25th 2017

Rolling around in their antiquated sounds, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis have landed far more than they’ve missed, and they’ve always played with distinctive mirth, but their fourth time out feels flat as hell, almost as if they had nowhere else to go after Smoking In Heaven.

Pinpointing that lack in Superscope is as easy as finding a hole in the dark, all you can do is say that something’s missing. Structurally the pieces are there, but they lock together with the dry joie de vivre of a Swedish construction manual.

Despite a few standout tracks, and the Durham girls outshining their brother, most of the songs feel dutiful rather than doting. Oh, Lewis still lets out the odd exceptional wail and there’s a whole lovesick redemption through-line to enjoy if you care to construct the narrative, but Kitty, Daisy & Lewis really make you work for that emotional oomph, then they even spoil that by serving Broccoli Tempura as the last track. It sounds roughly as delicious as it sounds and works wonderfully as something for venues to play while rousting patrons after last call.

Superscope lacks some intangible element, but still serves a small plate of passable tracks. Unfortunately just having the right ingredients doesn’t default to making meals taste great.

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Jordan Rakei: Wallflower

Article originally appeared on The Music Sep 18th 2017

If you’ve woken in a sweat worrying about Jack Johnson putting down his acoustic and picking up a Korg, don’t worry, Jordan Rakei already has you covered. After shedding his debut, Cloak, Rakei has picked up a collection of sensitivities to add to his soul style, steering away from the rougher auteur elements that originally endeared or intrigued – ambient deviations and break-beat constructions – sliding instead into an introspective funk. Rakei’s rhythms are skin-rakingly soothing and his voice is anachronistically attenuated to an evaporated era, singing Wallflower as a shy piece of work, a current-smoothed river stone sparkling in a bed of thousands.

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Kedr Livanskiy: Ariadna

Article originally appeared on The Music Sep 7th 2017

Where last year’s January Sun carried strange warmth wrapped in cold Siberian grit, Ariadna radiates light without giving off heat. Kedr Livanskiy’s latest is dangerously indistinct at times, walking you through a synth-based tundra where any distinguishing landmark is a meagre joy celebrated simply for being distinct in its surrounds. The halfway mark holds a small spoken word beacon that hasn’t respite, revelry, or revelation but is rather a reminder you might want to visit more hospitable climes. Maybe it takes patience to traverse, though there doesn’t seem to be enough payoff for it to matter unless your desire for indecipherable Euro-gaze pop is unusually high.

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Nadine Shah: Holiday Destination

Article originally appeared on The Music 18th Aug 2017

Taking us on a tour through human atrocity as guided by thoughtful earworms, saying Shah’s Holiday Destination is politically charged is like saying batteries hold electricity – true but meaningless unless that energy is channelled. Once again, Shah shows her greatest strength is an ability to craft pieces that float high ideas above grounded musicianship without sacrificing the merits of either. Like a nightingale floor, it’s a tightly constructed artefact full of traps for the careless and meaning for the wary, an album that delicately balances its rhythmic joys against dark purpose developed in a complex climate.

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Devil Electric: Devil Electric

Article originally appeared on The Music Aug 11th 2017

Devil Electric are dark in the same way that Venetian blinds block out the sun – it works but there are pitch black solutions out there you may prefer. Positioning themselves as purveyors of a profound doom, the songwriting is more syllogism than soliloquy and sits on a platform that panders to whatever derivation of “Put a bird on it,” plays in the monochrome twilight. They’re much more engaging when they lean into the rougher riffs and grit. Oh sure, they’ve got licks for days, and they’re very happy to show them off, but it’s more slideshow trudge than triumphant spectacle.

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Deafcult: Auras

Article originally appeared on The Music Jun 27th 2017

Auras is full of melodic drone, flecked with classic rock, sort of like listening to another band through a few sheets of gauze. While it might set a shoegaze pace, it’s often far more proactive, peppering each track with catchy little hooks and alluring deviations, subtle traces of ’80s electronica or an off-kilter country refrain, slipping in and out of the swelling grit that permeates their sound. It’s vaguely hypnotic – after a while, everything starts to fade away and you’re left floating inside someone else’s dream, like being trapped on an ice floe watching the Aurora Borealis shimmering faintly overhead.

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Melvins: A Walk With Love And Death

Article originally appeared on The Music Jun 28th 2017

A two part, two hour, concept album-soundtrack hybrid, A Walk With Love and Death is a strange schismatic mess, purposefully abrasive, lashingly discordant and, in its way, a straightforward vanity project delivered with avant-garde disdain… typical Melvins really. The soundtrack portion, Love, consists of layers of aural antagonism, like listening to the inner thoughts of a Lovecraft protagonist in the last chapters of madness. The LP portion, Death, while being expectedly dark is unexpectedly lacking any of the hellish erraticism that saturates not just the first half but their entire career, yet it’s still some of their finest music to date.

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Shrimpwitch: Eggs Eggs Eggs

Article originally appeared on The Music May 11th 2017

Shrill, fierce and loose, living in the vein of Bikini Kill, Shrimpwitch is ripe with classic riot girl motifs and a distinctly Aussie twang and colloquial quirkiness. Shrimpwitch’s debut EP is the best ten minutes of thrashed out sentiment on the scene, and it hits like a shot of vodka with a face slap for a chaser. Although it’s missing a bit of the personal charm and banter captured on their Live At The Tote recordings, it’s not lacking any of the bracing ferocity or frenetic energy of those performances. With two main ingredients and four hot tracks, Eggs Eggs Eggs is a simple but delicious recipe.

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Spirit Bunny: Spirit Bunny

Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 21st 2017

To get a feel for Spirit Bunny, put your hand on a Tesla ball and tell your hair not to stand up. Spirit Bunny almost crackles with that same electronic frisson, yet it feels, if not contained, then channeled into an amazingly precise conduit with clear purpose. A feather-light mesh of synth, key, repurposed rustic-tech, and coordinated percussion that’s as meticulous as the other elements are gritty and distorted. Battles, the second track on the album, is the audio equivalent of Ghost Dog nodding to RZA in the street, an understated acknowledgement of peers on different missions. It could be pure coincidence but it seems more like well deserved confidence.

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Mid Ayr: Elm Way

Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 21st 2017

Mid Ayr’s latest four-track is one part pop-rock, three parts dream-gaze, in almost that exact measure. Going through Elm Way is like taking a late summer detour through an innocuous suburban estate. Sure, it’s a well manicured piece of civil construction but it lacks some of the gritty thrill you get from more rustic projects. Underneath all the production it becomes much harder to connect with Hugh Middleton’s meaning, especially after revisiting last year’s earnestly lo-fi leanings. Hopefully down the road is a middle ground in the shape of an album that blends the best of both.

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K.Flay: Every Where Is Some Where

Article Originally appeared on The Music Apr 7th 2017

K Flay is the kid Missy Elliot and PJ Harvey might have raised.Scathingly witty, sardonic but not too dark, instantly upbeat and engaging, Every Where Is Some Where follows her first album’s trend of typical irreverence and atypical construction, blurring honest and understated lyricism with an addictively anarchic beatscape and fiercely delivered conviction. K Flay somehow manages to back moments of vivid rage against tranquil pieces of vulnerability, stitching a dozen disparate elements into something immediate and consistently delightful. Even her outright vulgarities are well-earned, varied, and as purposefully placed as every detail in Every Where Is Some Where.

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Julie Byrne: Not Even Happiness

Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 7th 2017

It’s been said before, but Julie Byrne’s got that Joni Mitchell thing going on, meandering through folky feelings and slenderly plucked strings, describing the scenery with expansive yet laconic candour. Not Even Happiness is Byrne’s second trip into this territory, while it finds her better prepared, or at least more polished in production, it’s also our second trip here and it feels a little like getting a postcard from the vacation you took last year. Byrne is clearly a natural songwriter, so it’s a real pity that among a handful of beautiful but interchangeable tales, the interlude is the standout.

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Diet Cig: Swear I’m Good At This

Article originally appeared on The Music Apr 3rd 2017

Sometimes a two-piece can come out thin and slip into overcompensation. Instead of filling those similar spaces with bouts of distended distortion and riff indulgence, Diet Cig lean into their sparsity like it was Archimedes’ lever. There’s a raging softness knitted into the duo’s angst that makes their debut joyful and refreshing, both in timbre and taste. Swear I’m Good At This is an aural security blanket wrapping up the damaged teen in all of us, telling us it’s alright not being okay, being hurt, angry, happy, manic; but this album is so far from alright — it’s great.

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Lastlings: Verses

Article originally appeared on The Music Mar 17th 2017

Almost effervescent, Verses deals R&B/soul doused in pop lyricism, glassine synths and subversive club beats that dabble in early dubstep without delving into the monstrous modernity of it. When it excels at the blend it can be quite striking, but none of it necessarily sparks, often lacking the grandiose gut-punch needed to really impact. All softly culminated crescendos, Verses acts like a lead-on for something bigger and, paired with their previous EP, comes across as prologue part two of a story that hasn’t been written yet. It’s only the anticipation that sucks.

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