So Adele’s been in a car with James Corden – who, as it turns out, is really good at driving whilst dancing to the Spice Girls. Who’d have guessed it?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nck6BZga7TQ align:center]Meanwhile, 2016 is producing more new music than we can shake a zig-a-zig-ah at. Let’s get stuck in.
Chairlift – Moth To A Flame
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfUuVyJlbg align:center]Last week we made the bold claim of Yeasayer having one of the most exciting albums to be released this year. As bold claims go, it’s not so outlandish – Yeasayer are, after all, really quite great. We did however forget one album in particular.
Chairlift have built up to the release of their third album by producing one of the best songs of 2015, ‘Ch-Ching’, followed that up with the energetic ‘Romeo’ and the emotional yet stylish ‘Crying In Public’, and now have come out with another piece of electro-pop brilliance to top it off.
‘Moth To A Flame’ is dance floor perfect. Carrying the dancehall vibes that made Justin Bieber’s ‘Sorry’ so fun but with an added euro-pop esc quirkiness, I’m already longing for the seasons to change so I can call it a summer anthem – it’s just dripping with sunny vibes.
Moth, the band’s third album, is out next week and we’re so incredibly excited – potentially the most excited.
Explosions In The Sky – Disintegration Anxiety
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT2UmlUmDQI align:center]Another band returning to the fold in 2016 after some time away are instrumental rock band Explosions In The Sky.
Whilst the notion of instrumental music is usually enough to make the casual listener run away scared, Explosions In The Sky manage to take this pretentious and terrifying genre and make it utterly captivating. Indeed, once the four minutes and eleven seconds of ‘Disintegration Anxiety’ are up I can’t help but feel like it should go on for longer.
What makes this track a little different from the norm is how much focus is on the drum beat. Where usually the three band’s three guitarists are left to create the main melodies, on ‘Disintegration Anxiety’ the whole track is driven by this big, punchy, White Stripes-y, distorted beat that the rest of the band have to play second to.
Despite this, Explosions In The Sky still maintain their incredible cinematic sound – I just wish it lasted a little longer.
The 1975 – The Sound
When covering the last two previews to The 1975’s second album, I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It *sigh*, it’s been fair to say we’ve been a little underwhelmed.
Whilst ‘UGH!’ is proving to be a subtly funky, pleasant track, coupled with ‘Love Me’ the total output just lacks any of the elements that made their debut album so well received – none of the inventiveness of ‘The City’, none of the emotion on ‘Robbers’, not even any of the energy shown on their rockier tracks.
With ‘The Sound’, however, the prospects for the new album look a lot brighter.
Matt Healy’s spoken a lot about how he wants this to an unabated pop record – like the big eighties albums he’s always going on about, or Swifty’s 1989 if you’re of a younger generation. Which is fine, potentially great, but you still have to do it right.
‘The Sound’ is simply just a much better interpretation of this than their two previous singles. The four-to-the-floor drum beat (thank you GCSE music) and house-y piano stabs give it a danceable energy whilst lyrical hook make it almost anthemically romantic – to use a proper The 1975 cliché, it wouldn’t fit too badly in a John Hughes movie.
Which all just begs the question, who chose ‘Love Me’ as the lead single?!
Tacocat – I Hate The Weekend
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oMATXxMhN0 align:center]To finish, some properly shaken up, guitar-based, fizzy pop.
Tacocat are a Seattle based four-piece band who’ve been making clever yet fun political pop songs since 2007. Their debut album made reference to serious themes like street harassment and seasonal affected disorder in such tongue-in-cheek fashion they not once broke step from their breezy surf-rock formula. Last week they put out the first snippet of their follow-up to that album.
‘I Hate The Weekend’ doesn’t touch on such seriousness. It does however provide an explosion of energetic guitar-fun that just doesn’t let up.
We’re just over two weeks into 2016 and I’m already struggling to keep track of all the new albums to be excited about. Is January always this good?
What do you think of our picks this week? Let us know in the comments below!
