Image: Pooneh Ghana

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:
Hiatus Kaiyote – Mood Valiant (FEATURE ALBUM)
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Angelique Kidjo – Mother Nature
Dag – Pedestrian Life
Faye Webster – I Know I’m Funny haha
Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It
Maple Glider – To Enjoy is the Only Thing
Massage – Still Life
Plaster of Paris – Lost Familiar

SINGLES:
Anita Lester – Sun and Moon and Stars
David M. Western – Blue Eyes Red
Emma Russack – Space and Time
Helado Negro – Gemini and Leo
Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders – Astronaut
MOD CON – Ammo

One of the best American lyricists in recent years, Atlanta musician Faye Webster releases her latest album, I Know I’m Funny haha. Webster’s work stands out from her contemporaries for how it works in conversation with older and largely unfashionable periods in American music – specifically, 1960s American big band pop music. Opener ‘Better Distractions’ sets the tone, with Webster interpolating the melody from Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Something Stupid’ into an bedroom ode to boredom, depression, and longing. Webster’s recontextualisation of these big melodies and sounds (there’s plenty of lush string arrangements and guitar arpeggios to be found here) into something smaller and intimate makes for a fascinating album that sounds like little else.

Melbourne neo-soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote has returned with their first album in six years, Mood Valiant. In the time between, the group broke through in the United States as hip-hop producers’ favourite new band, having been sampled on tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Their latest, an intelligent collection of psychedelic funk songs that deploy tricky time signatures and complex chord progressions, but are rooted in a soulful and danceable groove – an extension of what made their sound so distinct the last time we heard from them.

To Enjoy is the Only Thing is the debut album from Melbourne indie-folk singer-songwriter Maddy Zietsch. The record feels like a distinct cousin to Aldous Harding’s witch-folk and Grouper’s ambient pop melodies: Zietsch’s voice haunts the record, floating above sparse keys and drums while never feeling entirely detached. Thematically, too, the album operates in a minor key: scenes of love, guilt, and mortality among mountains occupy these pastoral-folk songs, as Zietsch looks back on her childhood in a strict, Christian household and the relationships she’s fostered since. A confident debut from an upcoming Australian artist.