New Music on 2SER 17/05/21
Image: Zackery Michael
Welcome to the new music review where we connect you with some of the best new music spinning on Breakfast, The Daily and Drive programs.
ALBUMS:
St. Vincent – Daddy’s Home (FEATURE ALBUM)
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CRUMB – Ice Melt
Dâm-Funk – Architecture III
Grinding Eyes – Taste The Monochrome
REMI – Fried
Squid – Bright Green Field
Ya Tseen – Indian Yard
SINGLES:
The Goon Sax – In the Stone
HARD FEELINGS – Holding On Too Long
Little Simz – Woman
Sampology – Memories in Flight
Sleater Kinney – Worry With You
Tim Ayre – Miami Drive
In the interviews in the lead-up to her latest album Daddy’s Home, the Dallas art-rock musician Annie Clark (St. Vincent) promised something of a reinvention of her herself. The robotic funk of 2017’s Masseduction and her 2014 self-titled would give way to a more human classic rock album about forgiveness, redemption, and fathers. The reality doesn’t match the advertising: Daddy’s Home, with its wonky synths and lyrics about celebrity, desire, and kink, is undoubtedly a St. Vincent record of the type she’s been making for the last seven years. But in the moments where Clark does play with her sound – check the George Harrison-esque sitar on album highlight “Down and Out Downtown” – you can hear some of the sparks of invention and wit that still make her one of the most exciting musicians in America.
There’s no musician alive today holding the torch for ’80s West Coast G-funk quite like Dâm-Funk. His take on the sound – reverential to pioneers like DJ Quik and Dr Dre, while also experimenting with negative space – has made him an in-demand collaborator for the likes of Snoop Dogg, Madlib, and Christine and the Queens. On Architecture III, however, Funk has shifted his signature sound towards house and techno: glitched synths and ‘80s Miami basslines are complemented with four-on-the-floor drum beats, refiguring himself among the likes of Larry Heard and Juan Atkins. A brilliant album from an always evolving producer.
Brighton post-punk group have come out of nowhere to make one of the angriest and unhinged punk albums of the year, Bright Green Field. Primal screams, jazz-inspired horn blasts, and slam poetry about pharmaceutical companies, the record is closest anyone has come to be matching the frenetic energy of 1992 post-hardcore classic Plays Pretty for Baby by The National of Ulysses (and I mean that as the highest compliment possible). A thrilling debut from an upcoming band.