You’ve got to feel sorry for most of the guys in Chicago’s Save Money collective. Chance The Rapper is an ever-growing phenomenon patiently biding his time before his first official album and Vic Mensa is now showing up on Kanye West cuts which will surely only do amazing things for his own blossoming solo career. How can the rest of Save Money possibly step out of those shadows?
Well Towkio’s answer comes in the form of the slinky energy injection of ‘Free Your Mind’. It’s an irresistible earworm of a track that combines Nile Rodgers-inspired guitar stabs with Donnie Trumpet’s unmistakably agile horns over Towkio’s effortless vocoder-clad voice. With more gems like this it shan’t be too long before Towkio becomes the third Save Money alumni to hit the big time, freeing the minds of the masses.
LCD Soundystem’s James Murphy once said that his version of the standard three and a half minute pop song was probably closer to five and a half. Norwegian cosmic disco maestro Lindstrøm on the other hand manages to trim his spacey epics to more digestible nine minute chunks when he aims for pop as on ‘Home Tonight’.
Skin Town’s Grace Hall is enlisted for the odd spare vocal sample but the focus of the track is undoubtedly the building array of instrumentation and the song’s infinitely intensifying groove. Before it’s over you’ve witnessed a vocal breakdown, a classic house piano motif and a fizzing climax.
‘You cannot outrun a ghost’ sings ol’ Ben Gibbard on ‘No Room In Frame’, the easing introduction into Death Cab’s imminent Kintsugi. You can just hear the fans’ cheers following Gibbard’s return to his well-documented comfort-zone of bleak lyrical themes of heartbreak and longing after the unusual contentness of life that his marriage to Zooey Deschanel brought on 2011’s Codes & Keys.
The song also enjoys a finer meshing of electronics with the band’s elegant guitar than Codes & Keys ever found as Gibbard asks ‘was I in your way when the cameras turned to face you?’ in that distinctive sigh of his. This last Death Cab record with Chris Walla on board should be a good’un.
Another tantalising first taste of an upcoming album, ‘Distant Past’ is still undoubtedly Everything Everything. The band’s most recognisable trait – the eclectic, acrobatic and rapid vocals of frontman Jonathan Higgs – rule the song and provide one of the band’s biggest hooks to date atop an almost house-inspired bounce of a chorus. Yet with their third record, Get To Heaven reportedly finding inspiration from the many tragedies of 2014 and boasting such graphic lyrics as ‘saw off all my stinking limbs/blood dripping down my sunken monkey chin’ it’s comforting to see that the Manchester quartet haven’t lost their bite yet.
Although only brief, ‘No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross’ acts as the fantastic first ambassador for Stevens’ return to his folk roots, featuring nothing more than his heartfelt whisper, acoustic guitar and the air conditioner rumbling away in the background. That’s how bare this thing is.
It’s a simple but beautiful song which touches on his affinity with religion in addition to his problematic relationship with his now late mother – a theme which supposedly defines his imminent seventh record Carrie & Lowell. The words are truly poetic, the melody swooning and that ‘fuck me, I’m falling apart’ line – daaaamn. It’s good to have the man back doing what he does best.
There’s nothing to not like about ‘Fiona Coyne’. From the magical video which follows a lonely chap and his disco ball best buddy (or partner perhaps? They were cuddled up in bed pretty close there…) on a quest to get some action to the track’s bubbly bounce, it’s just a good time. While currently in a state of limbo in regards to his moniker (corporations, man) ‘Fiona Coyne’ marks a giant leap from Ryan DeRobertis being just another vaporwave producer to something far more interesting. Built up from liquid disco guitars, chunky bass and a joyous horn section, this thing is packed with breezy hooks.
As we continue to wait for Chance The Rapper and co’s full-length Surf – which has yet to have a release date – The Social Experiment continue keeping us interested by teasing us with what they’ve been squirrelling away in the studio.
‘Sunday Candy’ arrives as the first ambassador of Surf and it maintains the gospel-tinged sugar coated sweetness that Chance and The Social Experiment have now perfected. There are splashes of steel drums and Jamila Woods guests on the sweet hook, it’s the gem you’ve been waiting all week for.
I came to this track solely for the Childish Gambino guest feature but found it so enchanting that I’d forgotten the rapper was even in it before his verse came around. It’s a simple song that rides a layered loop of thick percussion and rolling piano and Gambino delivers in his trademark pop-culture referencing cameo but it is Jillian Hervey’s soulful, Erykah Badu-esque vocals that own it
The track came out a few weeks ago now, but the accompanying video for it brings a new playfulness to it as we see Hervey and bandmate Lucas Goodman prancing around New York City and fittingly jumping pretty darn high.
Inescapable in pop music just a few years ago, Mark Ronson has since adopted a lower profile – if you can call producing Sir Paul McCartney , Lil Wayne and Duran Duran as maintaining a low profile anyway – but he’s enlisted the voice of one of his most successful young buddies to kickstart his climb back to the top.
You could probably predict how ‘Uptown Funk’ will sound before you’d hear it and you’d most likely be right. The track’s chicken scratch guitar and colourful synths harken back to 1999-era Prince while Bruno Mars’ braggadocios come-ons are more in line with something that Sly Stone or Parliament–Funkadelic might be found flirting with. The lyrics aren’t going to be inspiring any college classes anytime soon but then that’s never been what funk is about anyway. Most importantly: this thing has one hell of a groove.
It’s big, it’s in your face, it’s got a super-tight horn section. It’s beautiful.
When Josh Tillman performed ‘Bored In The USA’ on the Letterman show he was almost a mere cigarette away from resembling William Shatner in his ridiculous take on Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’. Tillman navigated his stage with an actor’s precision before perching on his comically self-playing piano for the song’s climax. Every move was made to emphasise the sheer theatricality that the track boasts with its crying strings and canned laughter.
Not as much of a Bruce Springsteen parody as you’d think, ‘Bored In The USA’ instead is simply a bare and beautiful song which wholly displays Tillman’s claims of singing his ass off on this new album I Love You, Honeybear. He covers a range of topics in its runtime including some of the insignificant complaints we find ourselves muttering from day to day but despite the applause and change to back to major key at the song’s conclusion there is no happy ending in this play. ‘Bored In The USA’ is the kind of song that seems as if it redefines it’s creator.
BASS ODDITY 