A revolving cast of contributors showcase some of the best new music releases from the past week.
Savages – ‘T.I.W.Y.G’
Music fans say this about everyone, but Savages are the best band I've seen live. Their 2014 Laneway performance was Jenny Beth as a devastated and torn voice wrapped in eerie and moaning guitar. Beth played the haunted victim, dancing to the post-punk ache rather than fighting it. Fucking good stuff.
'T.I.W.Y.G', the acronym for the song's own rallying threat, is a departure from the graceful live vocal delivery and towards a demented and challenging vocal hook. What happens when you mess with love is not revealed. It is assumed of course that is it not pleasant, but Beth's grunting repetition of the threat installs enough fear for details to even matter. The absence of this consistent anger during the Savages live show allowed for Gemma Thompson's guitar work to shine and simmer. However, what is valued so highly in Savages' musicianship remains and we get plenty of swirling guitar. Being a post-punk track, riding bass and pounding drums are also in bloom.
Savages play a piece that's intense in performance and even more so in ruthlessness intent. Their next live show, whenever that is, will be even better. – Alex Lyall
ILoveMakonnen feat 1st and Santigold - ‘Forever’
Nothing’s quite as crushing as realising a relationship is truly over. On ILoveMakonnen’s ‘Forever’, from his just-released new EP, the singer/rapper is a bleeding heart, left abandoned, confused and disappointed. It’s a downbuzz to say the least.
Despite a co-sign from Drake, which pre-empted an OVO Sound signing, ILoveMakonnen is still very much an outsider in today’s rap game. His sound bubbles over the edges of current trends, and his oddball style, while hard to box in, jumps between experimental and raw to straight-up forceful. ‘Forever’ comes from ILoveMakonnen 2, his second release of the year and follow-up to Drink More Water 5 - a mixtape that lacked the focus of his shorter, previous effort.
‘Forever’ isn’t exactly soul-searching stuff, but there’s enough introspection tucked into the song to keep it from falling off completely. It’s sombre, moody and filled with feelings of false hope. Yet at the same time, it’s not really about pleading for things to go back to the way they were – rather, it’s about accepting that it’s time to move on. The song, written in the summer of 2014, is a mix of what he’s experienced himself, or observed happening to others. “I haven’t felt defeated like that in a long time,” he told Genius. “Thank God.” - Hussein Moses
CL- ‘Hello Bitches’
If you’re not familiar with South Korean rapper CL then she has two words for you: Hello Bitches.
Having stormed the Korean charts for years as part of girl group 2ne1, CL is K-pop royalty and ripe for a cross cultural solo career. Now, as a piece of “pre-promotion” for her solo and Western debut EP Lifted, CL combines the powers of major players in both the Korean and Western music industries for the bilingual force of nature, ‘Hello Bitches’.
As first impressions go, ‘Hello Bitches’ is straight to the point: with a sharp self-awareness of her newcomer status, CL blows K-pop stereotypes out of the water and obliterates the fetishisation and racialised clichés so often tied to Asian women in a Western market: “Hello Kitty / getting hella old / want me to love them long time / and I tell em / NO”.
Featuring verses in both English and Korean, the hook remains in the latter throughout, yet ‘Hello Bitches’ is unlikely to get lost in translation. With a pounding beat and CL’s rapid fire delivery, the track is fierce and provocative, and by refusing to pander to a Western audience, CL succeeds in creating a sound and flow unlike anything present in the current hip-hop landscape.
As we know, K-pop is a diverse and fascinating industry, and ‘Hello Bitches’ demonstrates the potential of this as-yet-untapped market. Accompanied by the release of a ferociously entertaining video, directed and choreographed by so-hot-right-now Kiwi wunderkind Parris Goebel, and featuring Goebel’s dance crew ReQuest, ‘Hello Bitches’ harnesses the power of global female talent to create a track that is bold, catchy and forecasts a bright future for the melting pot of pop. – Katie Parker
The Cavemen – ‘School Sucks’
I first encountered The Cavemen years and years ago when the seminal Moonrakers played a show with them at the Wine Cellar. The Cavemen were about 10-years- old or so, or straight outta high school maybe, and they had already been playing show after show and working damn hard like a Real Band™ with their noses to the grindstone and all that nonsense.
You could pick any song from the album. They’re all mercilessly around a minute and a bit, and there’s never a riff to get bored of or an over-indulgent moment either. I found ‘School Sucks’ at random. “KILL THE TEACHERS” is as good a mantra as any and the solo isn’t too long either. It’s like a pisstake of dumb Black Sabbath wannabe solos without the bogan Ibanez guitar.
It gets frustrating attaching titles like ‘punk’ or whatever to a band. Perhaps ‘garage’ is ok but it’s largely meaningless. I’d rather think of The Cavemen as an enormously hard-working band who are terrifyingly in time with each other and make music that feels as if you have had too much caffeine and then consumed a salami sandwich and then consumed one of those litre cans of cheap Czech beer. – Eden Bradfield
Me and My Drummer – ‘Blue Splinter View’
Berlin indie band Me and My Drummer are releasing their new album Love is a Fridge early next year, and if that title doesn’t instantly generate interest, their new single, ‘Blue Splinter View’, certainly will.
Opening with jangling, upbeat percussion, singer Charlotte Brandi’s mature vocals set the captivating mood of the track. There are stylistic touches of Kate Bush and Florence Welch infused in Brandi’s voice, which convey a juxtaposition of fluttering gentleness and strong soulfulness.
There’s a lot of variety in the track, which draws on light and corrosive tones, building powerfully, yet gradually to an emotive climax. Drummer Matze Pröllochs adds energy in the form of a hollow, pulsing drumbeat. Meanwhile, the musical production noticeably adds polish to this catchy, experimental pop piece.
The song leads to its crescendo courtesy of Brandi’s mesmerising vocals which show off subtle emotional shifts and sorrowful emotion. It’s a noteworthy musical effort, which hints at what’s to come next for this wonderful ‘undiscovered’ duo. – Elizabeth Beattie
TOKiMONSTA feat. Anderson .Paak & KRNE – ‘Put It Down’
‘Put It Down’ is the first single off TOKiMONSTA’s next mini-album, Foreve. LA-based TOKiMONSTA, aka Jennifer Lee, worked with KRNE on the beat and recruited Anderson .Paak for vocals. All of the above are outliers in their own right: Lee is in a minority of women who produce, especially at the electro-hip-hop end of the spectrum; KRNE is a relatively fresh face out of the Bay Area; and .Paak is a multi-instrumental producer, rapper, and vocalist who’s been active just below the surface for a while now (although that seems certain to change after working with Schoolboy Q, The Game, and being shoulder-tapped by Dre for several tracks on Compton).
‘Put It Down’ opens with plucked strings over an augmented drumline and punctuated by a triangle - it’s a symphony over a trap beat. .Paak’s verses are musically and lyrically dynamic, a testament to his skillset as a master of “a million styles and a wild haircut”. He’s currently on tour with TOKiMONSTA so here’s hoping we get more from the two of them. Foreve is due out in January on her Young Art label. – Sarin Moddle
What's your song of the week? Tell us about it in the comments section.
