Essential Listening: This week’s best new music
Welcome back to Essential Listening, a place where we compile all the best new music of the week into the definitive tome of modern music: The Far Out Playlist.
A varied list of albums to check out this week, from the perfectly solid drive of The Black Keys’ Dropout Boogie to the folky tones of Kevin Morby’s This is a Photograph. Sunflower Beam went straight for shameless pop, with mixed results, on the occasionally resonant Headful of Sugar, but our Album of the Week had to be A Light for Attracting Attention, the wonderfully heady debut from Radiohead offshoot The Smile.
There were plenty of solid singles floating around the world of music this week as well, but only eight songs can find their way onto this list.
Here are the best new songs from the week, compiled into The Far Out Playlist.
The best new songs of the week, April 30th – May 7th:
bdrmm – ‘Three’
Hull shoegazers bdrmm have shared their latest single, ‘Three’. The new release comes as a candid reflection on the harsh realities of addiction. The latest single was recorded last year during the same sessions as the four-piece’s ‘Port’, which was released in April alongside a selection of alternative mixes of the song.
‘Three’ comes as a slow brooding epic with over six minutes of dream-like haze courtesy of the distorted guitar and synth runs that build in intensity with the lyrics towards the song’s close. Ryan Smith’s lyrics poetically narrate his personal struggles with addiction and reflect his newfound understanding of the issue.
Black Midi – ‘Welcome to Hell’
Around this time last year, Britain’s best band of experimental rockers Black Midi released their phenomenal sophomore LP Cavalcade. Now the band have returned to announce their third LP Hellfire along with the album’s first single, ‘Welcome to Hell’.
Musically reminiscent of Captain Beefheart at their most gleefully abrasive, ‘Welcome to Hell’ posits what the world is like when “in this land of oysters / you are the worm”. About halfway through, a triumphant horn fanfare blares, kicking the already-hectic track into high gear and driving the precise rhythmic arrangement into wild new territory. Drum breaks and chromatic guitar lines abound ‘Welcome to Hell’ sends the listener spiralling out of control and through the abyss.
Poliça – ‘Violence’
Minneapolis synth-pop group Poliça have shared ‘Violence’, a brand new single that previews the upcoming album, Madness, which is set to arrive on June 2nd via Memphis Industries.
‘Violence’ comes following the first two previewing singles for Madness, ‘Rotting’ and ‘Alive’. The new track arrives with a welcomed slow, brooding darkness that builds in intensity towards the middle of the song while layers of dreamlike instrumentals invade the periphery of the sound to take the mind somewhere far from the present. Towards the close of ‘Violence’, the instrumentals change tone into something more rapturous and uplifting yet still equally as emotive.
Julia Jacklin – ‘Lydia Wears a Cross’
Julia Jacklin is a rising voice in the world of alternative pop, issuing a new tune that embodies the proclivities of her daily environment, and ‘Lydia Wears A Cross’, the lead single from the newly announced album Pre Pleasure, flows with supreme confidence. The tune features the singer in euphoric mode, detailing the changes in the world around her.
‘Lydia Wears A Cross’ exhibits the vocalist in the midst of great change and transformation, earmarking a new form of change in a world that remains fixated on the world at hand. It’s a deeply spiritual work, tinged with autobiography and angular ambition, determined to make do with the world at large.
Ezra Furman – ‘Forever in Sunset’
Chicago singer-songwriter Ezra Furman has announced an upcoming studio album with the release of a new Noel Paul–directed video for the new single ‘Forever in Sunset’. The track follows the previous singles ‘Book of Our Names’ and ‘Point Me Toward the Real’, which were the first to preview the new album.
The latest single adds a new piece to the puzzle of All Us Flames with an atmospheric and moody soundscape that builds into soaring anthemic energy towards the end. The stream of consciousness lyrics appears self-reflective, while the official video created to accompany depicts a rowdy scene in a bar where all sorts of different characters begin to bustle on the dancefloor amid lovelorn stares.
Bret McKenzie – ‘A Little Tune’
Bret McKenzie has ditched the management of Murray and is set to unleash an album of serious songs. With a jazzy vibe, his debut single ‘A Little Tune’ subverts the show tune feel of a waltzing bassline with a soft and understated topline (think the polar opposite of ‘Sally’). The Nilsson comparison is immediately apparent, and beyond the joy of the tune’s melody, the smile slapped on the face of Flight of the Conchords fans comes from the fact that yes, of course, he succeeds in his new venture.
Brimming with originality and an unburdened sense of sincerity McKenzie wondrously keeps the central tenets of the Conchords alive, delivering a smile all the same without ever feeling the need to pull any of the jokes from the intermission banter into the song itself. This is the sort of anthem that could part clouds and coax the stars out amid a beauteous blue sky.
Stella Donnelly – ‘Lungs’
Stella Donnelly has returned with her first new music since 2019 with the single ‘Lungs’. Donnelly has a light-hearted approach to songwriting. Her words and melodies don’t seem to be sweated over, but in a liberating way, this gives them an air of sincerity and freedom much more so than the slapdash feel you might expect on paper.
The musical contours of ‘Lungs’ are all over the shop, keys are hard to pick and instruments float in and out on a whim—it is testimony to Donnelly’s skill that this doesn’t make it feel like a mishmash and allows for her to happen upon beauteous moments like the emotive middle eight where piano and profundity give the feeling that she has got her thoughts in order with a cathartic release.
Bartees Strange – ‘Hold The Line’
One of America’s best genre-blenders has returned as singer-songwriter Bartees Strange has released the third preview single of his upcoming album Farm to Table with the emotionally resonant ‘Hold the Line’. For his most recent track, Strange found inspiration in one of America’s most fraught moments in recent memory: the death of George Floyd.
With a soaring slide guitar solo and a slow-moving pace, Strange isn’t far from Drive-By Truckers or the various bands of Jason Molina on ‘Hold The Line’. It’s a good sound for Strange, who underplays the vocal with a real sense of fragility and helplessness that elevates lines like, “You’ve taken something of mine/You’re reaching for more than my life.” It’s the kind of song that would suffer from any bombast, so Strange strips it back to its most essential elements.
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