Great week for new releases with the restrictions related to the Pandemic seeming to not stop great musicians from releasing great tracks. November is usually a great month and we are happy to collect some of the best new ones. Today’s Thank God It’s Friday includes 7 tracks and 1 EP review, and, as well, features almost any music genre.
Charlotte Roberts – Grandad Song
Awkward sounding but highly captivating and based on great vocals and unexpected variations, this is how Charlotte Roberts’ got into our ears and mind with the honestly beautiful Grandad Song. The track that talks about familiar bonds and how some bonds are more special and are constantly getting back to our minds. This is an homage to her grandfather, but it’s also a great track that captivates us on every listen. Experimental? Yes. And with a great balance of novel and classic.
Paige Valentine – Fool
Paige Valentine’s capability to wonder with slow but emotionally charged tracks is among the best we’ve heard recently. The Perth-based musician released her x track of the year, and Fool is a marvelous combination of pop melodies with that indie ballad feel that always leaves the listener breathless. Most of it is due to hear vocal capability that engages with the listener almost immediately, but the beautifully constructed instrumental flows based on guitar and drums help in the build-up of the track to the point we feel we are side by side with her, listening to her sing and play. That intimacy is one of the purest and most difficult elements to achieve in new music. Paige Valentine does it. The clip that accompanies the track was filmed inside Fremantle’s stunning Naval store and is a work by filmmaker Luna Laure.
Isaac Lewis – Slow Down and Chew
Rising Isaac Lewis is one of those examples of an artist/musician who by keeping his chilled journey is captivating more and more people with his chilled tracks and relaxed sonority. We feel it is because he represents the opposite of what we typically find in our daily lives. The spirit of relaxing and being capable to stop and savor every bite of food, not be consumed by daily ideas of the future, and therefore being capable of savoring each day by what it offers. Slow Down and Chew is a song that serves as a metaphor to those feelings, and a track that in its pop meets surf-pop vibe manages to re-invent itself from start to end, captivating also in the way his vocals are kept chilled the entire time.
“It’s easy to forget to slow down and savor every bite of food when I’m eating. It’s also easy to be consumed by these grandiose ideas of what I’m supposed to achieve next or what benchmark I’m supposed to hit in order to see myself “level up” in life & music. However, it’s important to appreciate every moment along the way and to remind myself that longevity probably won’t exist if I look at the creative process through the lens of what rewards it’ll lead me to, rather than what ideas I can offer the world. “Slow Down and Chew” is my self-reminder to be guided by passion instead of chasing an idea of success.”
Annsofie Salomon – Soft Dreams
From Copenhagen, Denmark, visual artist and singer-songwriter Annsofie is the newcomer we’re all been waiting for. Exploring a distorted folk combined with chamber and dream pop, she has this unique timbre and way to approach her musicality. Placed somewhere between Joanna Newsom and Weyes Blood, in Soft Dreams Annsofie Salomon sings in a somehow naive tone, with soft melodies, and persistent rhythm. This is a song about giving all away but keeping always some hope and knowledge, like a recycling process of dreams. “I dumped it all in the ocean… it’s all in Copenhagen harbour somewhere. I threw out a lot of artwork, but I saved all the notes” she writes, and it sums the theme of the song: as a visual artist student, she saw many of her works eing rejected and “dumped it all to the ocean”, always starting with a new beginning. Soft Dreams is her debut single but it’s surely making path for many beautiful others to come.
BREEZE – Slowly Fading Away
BREEZE is a new Spanish band hailing from Barcelona who just released their first-ever single entitled Slowly Fading Away, the track was recorded and produced during the lockdown and mixes some avant-garde sensibilities with pop elements and subtle cultural influences. Accompanied by a gorgeous cinematic video recorded in Barcelona and directed by Sergio Piera, the track immediately gets us into its vibe. The clever songwriting and the way the vocals always emerge from it with a very pleasing sonority makes it a very likable song. The track sounds both classic and modern, and its structure is not as predictable as most songs nowadays, with some good and vague elements alternated with catchy bits. Really promising!
Danielle Durack – Eggshells
She’s not a new name for us, Danielle Durack has been followed closely by us for too long and the reason is obvious: her talent is immense. And Eggshell proves that, once again. Danielle uses her sensibility with music to express herself in matters of love. Everything she can’t say personally and with words to her partner, she says it now in Eggshells. This is why the song sounds so personal and so lovable, also so relatable throughout the lyrics. This is just another piece of art from the promising Danielle Durack. It’s not the first time we say this and we’ll keep on saying: pay close attention to this amazing singer-songwriter, shorter than you think, she’ll be playing at your citiy festival.
Dekker – A Better Way
The American musician and half of the folk duo Rue Royale Brooklyn Dekker presents now his debut album, Slow Reveal: Chapter One and A Better Way is the last released single. His voice is as deep as it can get: not in a way of low notes or timbre -even though he hits it whenever the song leads there- but he actually sings with such a profound voice we get stuck in it. The song builds in a captivating way, sounding current and in some way flawless, Dekker explores his experiences through this pandemic year, since he started this project in August last year, most of his process was during 2020. Here is a new fresh folk hit for you.
Midnight Ambassador – Fragile Igloo
We’ve written several times about Midnight Ambassador (here, here, and here) and we’ve always been fans of the way he mixes urban genres, classical pop vibes, RnB bits, and hip-hop rasps. This week they released Fragile Igloo (the second EP and the first in two years), and the extended play is filled with great moments.
Superstitions give it the perfect vibe to start things with and serve as the perfect intro to a track like Pleasure where we can feel the Glass Animals influence more than in any other song. Still, the tracks have a distinct feeling too, with the high-pitched vocals perfectly build into the track’s sonorities and changing styles in an always surprising way. Burned Down Cigarettes slows things down and sounds like a proper modern ballad. Introspective and talking honestly about love, the track is very easy to feel engaged with and sounds perfect as a soundtrack for more commercial series like Grey’s Anatomy. Mirror picks the rhythm up again, build with a more synth approach it delivers a very strong chorus and showcases André Graça’s capability to talk hip hop. The EP ends with All My Love fulfilling Midnight Ambassador full pop sonority and capacity to engage with both vocals and quirky instrumentals.
Have a nice one guys!
Love from the WtMM Team