Well shit in a bag and punch it, if that wasn’t a colossal kick in the nethers. What’s worse is that we didn’t get today off in celebration. Well if you’re nursing your commiseratory or celebratory hangovers, depending on your predilection, here are some bingy bongy bangers. It’s Tracks Of The Week. You never know, we might actually get summer sometime soon.
KEYS – There’s No I In Teams
Why we love it: because we are all KEYS, surely? ‘Rested our eyes’ in a works Teams meeting and no-one actually noticing. And not sure whether to take this as a win or confirmation of our insignificance in the cosmos. ‘There’s No I In Teams’ efficiently sums up the anxiety landed on us by the coldness and isolation of modern life, via this short, sharp edged no-frills B-52’s styled surf-rock tune delivered by the Welsh psychedelic-pop and rock stalwarts.
‘The emergence of conference calls since COVID has reduced our human relationships to pixels on a screen. Avatars represent ourselves online, while we stay indoors,’ explains KEYS mainstay Matt Evans.
The new single is a taster from the band’s as yet unnamed seventh album, the follow up to 2020’s Home Schooling, due for release early 2025 via Libertino. (Cath Holland)
Body Meat – Electrische
Why we love it: Body Meat is the musical project of Chris Taylor and he shares new single ‘Electrische’from his forthcoming debut album Starchris, out 23 August on Partisan Records. To learn it was written at 2am in Taylor’s home comes as no surprise. The track arrived through an exercise in free writing and overthinking, which Taylor describes as “like driving a fast car through the hills of Switzerland at night where you can the lights of a club faintly off in the distance.”
The single’s opening beats come with a tinge of anxiety and tension, accompanied by a distorted vocal with its repetitive lyric. Its mesmerizing and hypnotic with the pulsating electronica bewitching the listener. Halfway through a dreamscape is entered with shoegaze synths creating a moments pause before the beats resume. The vocal becomes sharper in focus, as if making sense of what has gone before. The layers of vocal blending together in harmony towards the end perhaps symbolising the arrival of dawn.
‘Electrische’ is accompanied by a video featuring long, single-take shots that follow Taylor and create a morphing effect. It’s a straightforward idea and yet so effective and captivating. Body Meat is an artist who likes to immerse himself in various genres and blend them together to create songs which are unpredictable in their trajectories. The album is an intriguing prospect. (Julia Mason)
Chavez Cartel – Unfamiliar Boy
Why we love it: Australia’s Chavez Cartel have released new single ‘Unfamiliar Boy‘. A track full of intensity, yet shifting between the calm and tumultuous. Lead by guitar riffs there is however a background noise that can’t quite be deciphered during the quiet sections adding to the atmosphere. Tension threads through the whole track, with the repetitive lyric of the chorus perhaps suggesting the rumination that can occur when trying to find a way forward. The 5-piece have created a oozing with the frustrations of life, echoed in the heavy pace, and that echoey outro. The video reflects the track beautifully, filmed on the New York leg on the bands US tour.
Chavez Cartel share the following on ‘Unfamiliar Boy’:“The song was inspired by a period of time where life seemed to be going really fast and having the feeling where you don’t have time to even think. Like life is slipping through your fingers and you can’t quite grasp what’s really going on. Not a good headspace to be in. There’s a line coming out of the breakdown, “I need to wheel-spin in the mud, now that the months feel more like weeks”, that paints the mental picture of that feeling. It’s sort of like a plea where I’m going “If my head is going to go round in circles this fast can’t we at least stand still while we’re burning out and overheating so we’re not wasting any more time while we’re doing it?”. (Julia Mason)
Silverbacks – Selling Shovels
Why we love it: Dublin six piece Silverbacks return with new single ‘Selling Shovels’, recorded with Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox. It’s their first release since second album Archive Material (Full Time Hobby) in 2022. Opening with shuffling guitar riffs, this track canters along at pace. There is definitely a lightness of touch here, just listen to that playful vocal and instrumentation which ebbs and flows. Silverbacks exude having a great time on ‘Shelling Shovels’, with surreal lyrics plus scratchy screechy guitars in places just to add to the thoroughly entertaining mix.
Daniel O’Kelly expands on the background to ‘Shelling Shovels’:
“The idea for these lyrics came from a habit I have – maybe everyone does it? When reading a historical figure’s wikipedia page I often lose interest and so I jump straight to the ‘personal life’ and ‘death’ part of the page to see how they died and the circumstances they were in at the time. The lyrics flicker between mundane distractions and fairly horrific images of war. ‘Selling Shovels’ is a reference to ‘selling shovels during the gold rush’.”
Welcome back Silverbacks! (Julia Mason)
Wunderhorse – Silver
Why we love it: Wunderhorse have released ‘Silver’, the third track from the band’s second album, Midas, which is set for release on 30 August via Communion. The backstory of the creation of songs is fascinating. ‘Silver’ was originally conceived long before Midas began to take shape, however it almost failed to make the record due to the sense that its pieces weren’t quite fitting into place. The band persevered, recognising that it was worth the effort and whilst stateside at Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studio (birthplace of Nirvana’s In Utero & PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me), Wunderhorse stripped it right back. The result is what we hear today, a track full of impassioned lyrics, looking inwards and not liking what is seen. The accompanying instrumentation is dense, perhaps a surprise knowing the origin story. The emotion of the track grows as it progresses as if continuing to ruminate and build on the negativity which can persist.
Frontman Jacob Slater says of the track:“The song is about that ugly side of yourself that you try to keep a secret, but you know it’s there because it makes your skin crawl sometimes. It gets you places but fucks you up in the process. Everyone has elements of their makeup that they’d rather not admit to or keep locked away and never look at. That’s what ‘Silver’ is about. Kind of.”
In October, the band’s headline shows will see them step into bigger venues, which includes London’s O2 Academy Brixton and Glasgow’s Barrowlands. The week prior to Midas’ release will see the quartet play Reading + Leeds, with performances at Glasgow’s TRNSMT and a Cornwall homecoming for Jacob at Boardmasters also scheduled. Wunderhorse are also building anticipation for the release of the album with weekly announcements for instore shows in conjunction with independent record stores. November sees them rejoin Fontaines D. C. as support on the European leg of their tour. (Julia Mason)
high jump – Avenue
Why we love it: The brainchild of Harry Martin and Rick Holland, high jump are forging a reputation for their atmospheric and musically rich soundscapes. They recently released their debut EP ‘001’ mixed by acclaimed engineer Max Cooke (GoodBooks, Ellie Goulding). ‘Avenue’ is a standout from the release, blending evocative layers of warm analogue synths, textures of guitar, pulsing beats and dreamy vocal harmonies, that reside with the wistfulness of watching the sun set on a trip away to an island get away.
Speaking about the EP, the duo explain:“Over the last couple of years I (Harry) was writing and sending unsolicited demos to Rick, drummer in the band Tungz. Rick managed to cherry-pick the most promising of these through a series of long voice notes and ad hoc studio sessions, and we soon had a collection of songs that felt significant enough to share. Starting with ‘M2K’ at the end of 2023, we decided to start putting some ideas together and broadcast these tunes further than our friendship group.
The sound of the collection is really an anecdotal summation of our influences and the music we’ve enjoyed recently. We didn’t set out to achieve or replicate any specific sound and there’s a blend of influences in there, from The War on Drugs and Cocteau Twins to Jai Paul and Toro Y Moi. We love the counterbalancing senses of scale we’ve managed to capture in these six tracks. All of them started in bedrooms and huddled corners of our day-to-day, and there are plenty of moments where you can feel that intimacy, but working at Snap! Studios with Max Cooke to finish the recordings really enhanced the more ambitious sections with extra layers of grandeur and finesse.” (Bill Cummings)
Nilüfer Yanya – Call It Love
Why we love it: Following the recent announcement of her third album My Method Actor, which is due 13th September on Ninja Tune, Nilüfer Yanya shares new song ‘Call It Love’. With her melifiously soulful delivery and spindling and elegant backdrop of plucked guitars, and sighing strings, as she delivers personal and glowing couplies as she tip toes accross a bed of glistening stones. On the track Nilüfer delves inwards, asking listeners to join her in confronting deep-seated truths and trusting their intuition. Speaking on the track’s inspiration and vulnerable tone she shares, “It takes a certain kind of bravery to fully trust your instincts. It’s about allowing your calling to lead you, to let it guide you somewhere. Let that consume you and destroy you.” It’s sensitively and exquisitely drawn song that is like being let in on some hushed secrets. Wonderful.
While writing My Method Actor, Nilüfer retreated into the studio with her creative partner, Wilma Archer (Sudan Archives/MF Doom/Celeste). She had toured her second album, PAINLESS, for a year and entered a period of transition, between albums, between record companies, between homes. My Method Actor deals a lot with the idea of movement from one part of life and into another. The seeds of My Method Actor were planted in early 2023, but it wasn’t until the spring of that year that shoots began to appear. As songs started to form, Yanya and Archer squirrelled themselves away from the world. “This is the most intense album, in that respect,” Yanya says. “Because it’s only been us two. We didn’t let anyone else into the bubble.” They wrote and recorded in small sessions, spread across London, Wales and Eastbourne.(Bill Cummings)
Sunday (1994) – TV Car Chase
Why we love it: “It’s gonna take more than nuclear war/to take me away from you” sings Paige Turner swooningly, and what a line, and Sunday (1994) are masters of delivering couplets ripe with bittersweet melodrama and punctured with surprisingly raw imagery set to deliciously hooky melodies, and the new song from their forthcoming deluxe EP, ‘TV Car Chase’ is no exception. Here’s another one “my head is in the oven” she sings over and over, maybe heartbreak makes you feel suicidal? That’s honest, yet the tune is absolutely heavenly piece of gorgeously executed romantic guitar pop that wraps itself around your heart and won’t let go, with a undercurrent of chiming guitars, retro snippets of phone conversations and elegant slow motion percussion. You could draw comparison with elements of the songwriting and sounds of Lana Del Rey, The Cranberries or The Sundays, but this is just another stunning release from one of the best new bands we have heard this year. Absolutely crushing in all the best ways.
The band described the track as “a snapshot into the living room of two people who are surviving their own mental war. Something as small as sitting on the couch together can heal so much.” (Bill Cummings)
