When Friday is a holiday we feel like Saturday is something strange. There is more space for contemplation, relaxation, and for fun. And it seems like we are not the only ones. On a week filled with releases (we’ve listened to more than 500 new tracks this week), there is an abundance of good feelings throughout. Those feelings are independent of genre, and in this selection – our week “best of” – you will listen to a lot of different tracks from a lot of different genres. And as we enjoy proper novelty, a lot of them actually go across several genres. They have one thing in common: these are the tracks that surprised us the most, either by being novel or by going deep on our capacity to contemplate.
4B2M – Get It Done
“Sounds like a designer drug” that’s how 4B2M (Four Brothers Two Mothers) describe their latest release Get It Done. And we get it. We truly do. The track mixes funky with rock elements, speedy vibes with quirky elements, but is super incisive on making us party around it. The intro is strange – for sure – but also genuine and novel, sounding like nothing else, and nothing else sounding like it. It is also catchy and enters our brain like a proper instruction to get things done. Those words echo in our head from start to end while some pretty remarkable and exciting instrumental elements go everywhere without losing their sense of melody. It gives us the impression that the song is going to lose itself, but it never does, it actually works as a proper trip with a defined goal: ending our procrastination. And we not only love it but would like to thank you for it! All of that while we sing itself in the shower like proper crazy workers. Because that’s our way to go about life.
Bandit – Peppermints Don’t Hide Everything
From the city of The Beatles to the rest of the world, Bandit continues to make their mark, and their latest single, Peppermints Don’t Hide Everything, is no exception. If there’s indie-rock that should be played loud and clear all the time, it’s here in front of our screen. And playing in our headsets, of course. Right from the first riffs, our hairs are coiled and it feels like we’ve gone back to 2006 when a tiny band from Sheffield was just starting out. Arctic Monkeys, remember?
Dreamers feat. Big Boi and UPSAHL – Palm Reader
You don’t even have to focus much on Dreamers’ latest track for it to stick into your head for a lot – A LOT – of time. Featuring Big Boi (from Outkast) and UPSAHL – not even gonna start on how they both sound incredible in this – the track is an instant pop hit that mixes hip hop elements and a funny-impressive video that makes us want to be in Summer already. Entitled Palm Reader, it ranges from a guitar melody that reminds us of White Stripes, to a super catchy funky-like freak-beat, and even gives space for the female vocals to sound sexy and make us all out of breath. Sold as a love song, or as a modern pseudo-spiritual track, we are convinced it’s impossible to stay indifferent to this. Everything about it sounds familiar but unique, impactful but still giving us space to breathe – using the hip hop variations as proper periods for contemplation – and the build-ups and variations are superb and clever. One for the top-of-the-year lists. For sure. The perfect “new pop” song right here.
Essential Forever – Walk
Borrowing their name from their founder’s pursuit of greatest hits LP’s, the artist’s essentials, Essential Forever encapsulates Alex Heaney’s discoveries of new artists from the ’60s. The Chicago-based band releases Walk, a Paul McCartney-inspired story, which will be part of their debut album A Lot Still To Say. This song is not only a walk, is a fun nostalgic trip through those greatest hits, it’s a song that transports us to a mythical place with strawberry fields, blue days and dark nights, good vibrations, and this unchained melody. Essential Forever are a new fresh breeze and we hope they deliver us as many essentials and renditions as Heaney’s influences, like Walk. So let’s take a walk with them.
Jax Anderson x K.Flay – I Don’t Care Anymore
Somewhere between pop and Courtney Barnett (for us she created a genre), Jax Anderson found her sonority. Not an easy one to decipher, but I Don’t Care Anymore is a track that for us, music curators and bloggers make the difference in the way it’s a gorgeous challenge to decipher. The track is a marvelous anthem to the necessity of letting go or the unnecessary need for everything to be important, and for all those things that should apply to a human being. The expectations, others expectations about us. It is also about figuring out who we are as we grow old and not caring too much about all that is expected of us. It is about self-empowerment, about how growing up and turning out to be our own-self is the actual definition of freedom. K. Flay gives the track the ultimate edge on rapping about how she grew up not caring anymore, and being happy that way. It is a non-genre-defined track for what should be a non-genre-defined life. And we absolutely love it.
Slowburner – Unfold Yourself
Élvio Rodrigues is for us a very special artist. Performing under the name of Slowburner, he was in fact the second artist ever performing our WtMM Balcony Shows and the first one with a non-acoustic setup. His performance was flawless and impressive, despite being his first public appearance ever. Slowburner has this ability to hypnotize everyone with his piano and his complex layered compositions and Unfold Yourself is not an exception: it is a false downtempo that counts with a running pace and ethereal reverb which evolves all of the piano keys. In the words of Élvio, Unfold Yourself was exclusively composed for Piano Day, commemorated last March 29th. And what an amazing song to celebrate.
Valley Boy – Gummi Bear
Gummi Bear is one of the tracks featuring in Valley Boy’s debut EP entitled Thursday Friday. The duo brings an indispensable vibe to our ears. Featuring indie-pop sonorities that are in between lo-fi productions and actually some pretty remarkable full productions, and Gummi Bear is a hugger from the first moment. The track is emotionally charged and the story-telling vibe is like no other, a proper pop-rock song that feels like we are being completely immersed in an emotional trip with its proper explosions. It sounds like a beautiful memory, one that we like to remember as much as we can remember, and the track also lullabies us from side to side. Cleverly written and gorgeously produced, there aren’t many things like it in today’s music. There are so many layers to it, so many things to notice while you don’t have to notice anything and just let yourself go along with it.
We read in the PR that the songs in Thursday Friday “cover territory spanning from our personal relationships to our family ones, and even our relationship with each other as friends, and are all shaped through the lens of having grown up together in our beloved San Fernando Valley. We hope you stick around as we continue to unpack more of our childhoods and accumulate more tiny keyboards”. No doubt we will. We feel it inside. And it must be so good and as a songwriter when you write songs about yourself that feel the World for everybody else…
Oh no Noh – Where One Begins and the other stops (New EP)
If there are beautiful moments to remember, Where One Begins and the Other Stops is one of them. This is Oh No Noh’s first EP. The artist from Leipzig, Germany, brings us the perfect soundtrack for that kind of day when we just need to dream. And that’s when we need to follow the rhythm, and what good it brings us, at the end of the day. After a full thirty-two minutes, we are left to smile. And smile out loud as we share this good energy. A highlight? Golb. What a sudden urge for summer, friends and lots, lots of beer!
Jane Inc. – Number One (New Album)
Toronto may be across the Atlantic, but Carlyn Bezic can be heard loud and clear here in our tiny Lisbon office. Carlyn embodies Jane Inc., and with her, we unlock an infinite imaginary of personalities, genres, and, above all, styles. Call her indie, pop, alternative, whatever you like. We were captivated from the first minute to the last, with a talent that can’t get out of our heads. Her first album is out now. It is called Number One.
From the eight songs, we present you Dirt and Earth. A mix of emotions, where climate change is the center of this whirlwind. And then it’s all of us – and all the moments when we irreversibly damage our beloved ecosystem. And this is all reflected in the rhythm and flow that the music follows. For a moment it reminded us of Tame Impala, and their psychedelic rock, in our minds.