Friday 22 January 2021

THE BEST AND WORST NEW TRACKS OF THE WEEK 22/01/2021: Goat Girl, Field Music, Life Drawings and more…

Enjoying lockdown 3? Personally, I think it’s the worst in the trilogy. Aside from laughing at Bernie Sanders memes, listening to music is the only thing that has been keeping me sane this week. Here are the most noteworthy tracks that I listened to…

THE BEST:

‘Badibaba’ – Goat Girl

South London rock group Goat Girl deliver this gorgeous and equally eerie song about the self-destruction of the human race. Psychedelic guitars, woozy synths and groovy bass make up the instrumentation (the moody verse at 0:42 kinda reminds me of Trail of the Dead’s ‘Mistakes and Regrets’ – which is a song I absolutely love!). The catchy harmonised hook is oddly uplifting, while the instrumental outro is contrastingly menacing. It’s a whirlwind of different moods – and it has me hyped for their upcoming album On All Fours.

‘Orion From The Street’ – Field Music

The band name has put me off listening to this group for quite a while. I always assumed they were some wishy-washy folk rock group playing acoustic ballads amongst herds of sheep. They’re thankfully a lot more interesting than that. ‘Orion From The Street’ is a proggy indie rock track that revolves around a hypnotic bass riff, punctuated by flourishes of arpeggiated piano, electric guitar and loopy synth. The vocals meanwhile sound like Paul McCartney. It’s the kind of music I wish Macca was making these days (instead of abominations like ‘Fuh You’).

‘Tony’s Lottery’ – Life Drawings

Following their 2020 panic-buying anthem ‘Trolley Dash’ (which made my top tracks of the year), London rock group Life Drawings are back with another TV-show-inspired song – this time loosely themed around Whose Line Is It Anyway?. I say ‘loosely-themed’ because this track doesn’t really have much of a theme at all. According to the band, it’s a ‘demonstration of placeholder lyrics getting out of control’.  The track sees frontman Jon Wood delivering a series on nonsensical lines and meta quips like ‘this song isn’t very popular/ and the synths are out of key’. It then ends with a spoken word narrative of Tony Slattery’s escape into the woods ‘NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN!’. Some people may find it too off-the-wall, but it’s right up my alley. The guitars and keys meanwhile remind me of Guerilla Toss.  

‘Ascension’ – There’s Talk

Of all the dream pop songs I’ve listened to, this might just be the dreamiest. It practically out-dreams them all. It’s dreamier than Slowdive or even Beach House. IT’S ALMOST AS DREAMY AS YOUR MAMA (I’m sorry, that was childish). The slow rhythm and twinkling synths lull the listener in. And then the vocals come in, slathered in reverb and delay, making them sound huge and otherworldly. The hypnotic track comes off the Oakland trio’s new EP Great Falls.  

‘This Man’ – Tobacco

This experimental synthpop number is the work of Tom Fec. He’s the frontman of Black Moth Super Rainbow (who I’m not familiar with – although I love the wacky band name) and Tobacco is his solo project. ‘This Man’ is made up of squelchy squealing layers of synth and digitally distorted vocals. There’s a dissonance to it that’s both ugly and alluring. The result is like Daft Punk on acid.

THE WORST:

‘Masterpiece’ – DaBaby

If this garden variety blowjob anthem is DaBaby’s definition of a 'masterpiece', I think I’ll give the rest of his catalogue a miss.