The 10 best songs released today

1.

Claude

twenty something

In putting together today’s release roundup, I came across the music of Chicago artist Claudia Ferme, AKA Claude, and this sumptuous slice of dream-pop music, hitherto unknown to me.

A debut album is out today, called, a lot’s gonna change.

I look forward to diving in.

Follow Claude on Insta.

2.

Little Dragon

Frisco

It’s never a bad idea to press play on a new Little Dragon jam is it? The Swedish group have a new EP called Opening The Door, out on September 16th on Ninja Tune.

‘Frisco’ is a journey of a song that has a beat that reminds me of another well-known song I can’t place right now so please hit me up if you hear it.

It’s a song about “renewal, letting out your full potential and moving with the wave of change and life.”

3.

Loyle Carner

Georgetown

Loyle Carner releases ‘Georgetown’, a track with a Madlib production (it’s not the first time they’ve collab’d) that explores the rapper’s mixed-race identity.

‘Georgetown’ opens and closes with a sample of the poem “Half-caste” performed and written by the mixed-race Guyanese poet John Agard.

“John Agard’s poem “Half-caste” had a heavy impact on me. To see someone who was older, that looked like me, sharing a reflection of a similar lived experience made me feel comfortable/proud to not fit in. It kinda gave me the permission to finally write explicitly about being mixed. There’s so much beauty in the gaps in-between, and in some ways this song touches on that. For me, it’s about finding this inner confidence through understanding of self, and spending time back home. It is a representation of finally feeling like one whole person instead of two halves. Also another piece of the MADloyle puzzle. More on the hard drive.

Carner

Sounds like there could be a full Madlib/Loyle Carner album called MADloyle? Listen to Carner’s last single ‘Hate’.

4.

Mykki Blanco

Steps (feat. MNEK & Saul Williams)

Mykki Blanco will release a new album Stay Close To Music, a companion piece to last year’s Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep on October 14th that features previously released collaborations with Kelsey Lu, Michael Stipe, Diana Gordon, and Devendra Banhart, and production by FaltyDL.

For the latest track preview, Blanco enlists pop artist MNEK and polymath musician and poet Saul Williams that swells with narrative and voices.

“I think a song like ‘Steps’ is a testament to what can happen when three very unique artists are given time to create a meditation together – to respond to one another when the moment is right – almost like the lines of a haiku – maybe ‘Steps’ is a prayer unique in its ability to transcend and transform and provide peace without necessarily providing an answer.”

“In many ways ‘Steps’ symbolises a pointed progression in my songwriting. I think as a songwriter I was not always willing to be so vulnerable. I finally feel I have lived enough, lived long enough and lived through enough to speak simply, plainly and find in the zen-like simplicity something honest and true and pure. ‘Steps’ is written as a diary entry to myself. It is naked in its delivery and it functions much more as a poem than a pop song.”

Mykki Blanco

Mykki Blanco plays Mother in Lost Lane Dublin on December 3rd.

5.

PinkPantheress

Picture In My Mind (feat. Sam Gellaitry)

UK producer and singer PinkPantheress has fast become an influence and a cornerstone of a new generation of listeners with her drum’n’bass / garage / pop music.

Following the release of her debut mixtape To hell with it last year, ‘Picture In My Mind’ is marked with an increased professionalism in production, with Socttish DJ/producer/singer Sam Gellaitry joining her on vocals.

6.

God Knows, Denise Chaila, MuRLi

No Weapon

Narolane combine on a new Amapiano-inspired track from God Knows new EP We Move The Needle out today. The EP is inspired by the South African house music genre, which GK spoke to us about on the podcast last year.

“I have always been an action that speaks louder than words type of person and even more so when It comes to my career. I love art and artists that draw from real life. Every record that I put out reflects that reality. A bold statement like ‘We Move The Needle’ is me stating what I in my opinion is what we do here at narolane.”

God Knows

7.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Burning

Yeah Yeah Yeahs will release a new album Cool It Down on September 30th.

Following ‘Spitting Off The Edge Of The World’ with Perfume Genius, ‘Burning’ is a song that sounds big in execution, that is at times, reminiscent of Lana Del Rey, albeit with a more anthemic piano pop feel. The song is built on a piano loop inspired by The Four Seasons’ ‘Beggin’, and lyrically references the fires that engulfed Los Angeles in 2020.

“Back when I was 19 living in the east village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street, I left a votive candle burning on a plastic yaffa block which in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and a half of having one drink down the block firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire, I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras etc. but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favorite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.

If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Beggin’, with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning’.”

Karen O

8

Max Tundra

MBGATE (Kero Kero Bonito Remix)

Since arriving at the turn of the century, London producer Max Tundra always felt like a musician ahead of the curve. 2002’s album Mastered By Guy At The Exchange is a glittering collection of polychromatic pop music delivered with an exploratory outlook that brings electronic, R&B and dance textures into its fold in wholly idiosyncratic way. He’s now being called a hyperpop pioneer.

Tundra’s three albums Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be (2000), Mastered by Guy at The Exchange (2002) & Parallax Error Beheads You (2008) are being re-issued today by Domino along with a Remixtape featuring the above remix by Kero Kero Bonito, whose boppy day-glow style is perfectly suited to Max Tundra’s bright visions. The original sounds like a Daft Punk offcut chopped and screwed, and the Kero Kero Bonito version adds a knowing modern take on the track, and is certainly the first song i’ve heard to use the word DSPs (digital streaming providers) in the lyrics.

“For me, Max Tundra was a foundational fixture in a teenagedom spent discussing MilkyTracker and charity shop expeditions in between romance and house parties. He was possibly the first musician to collate the references that later codified our corner of pop music, like trance supersaws, jazz fusion chords and hated General MIDI sounds. Such tropes represent pop’s capacity to spin wit and craft into impossible compulsion, and also – crucially – challenge arbitrary cultural orthodoxy (especially in the ’00s, but even now).”

“The original track constructs a neck-snapping groove through dizzying sample editing, and we had little choice but to base our track on this groove wholesale, though our cheerleader chants and unplayable solos are two KKB trademarks that sit happily in Max Tundra’s universe too. Today, we’re doing the mashing up, and the collective quest for magic pop continues, but Max Tundra’s discography remains a frontier marker for where music can go.”

Gus Bonito of Kero Kero Bonito

9.

Kyoto Love Hotel

Settling (July)

The Tipp electronic duo of Laura Sheary and Joe Geaney aka Kyoto Love Hotel have dropped three singles now from their When Do You Think It Begins EP (September 9th) including ‘If We Had A Mind’ and ‘Fortune Tellers (December)’

“‘Settling (July)’ is like a cross between Talos and Purity Ring and Laura says the song is “about a character called Sarah that I’ve been writing fiction about for a while. As is the case with most of our songs, imagined and real worlds coexist and interact with one another, and moments of my own experience run alongside moments from hers. The song is about memory, about the many versions of the self that exist all at once, about the ways we perceive ourselves and the ways we are perceived by others. I’m interested in the liminal, hazy state of mind that returning to your hometown can give rise to; the peripheral headspace you settle into.”

Watch the excellent video by Niamh McCann, starring Gearóidín Devine.

Catch Kyoto Love Hotel at Electric Picnic, Vantastival and Ireland Music Week this year.

10.

Tomike

Aren’t Up for Debate

Fresh from a recent set at Primavera Sound in Barcelona and a recent 1000 Beasts remix, Dublin singer Tomike insists her feelings are not up for debate on this jazzy laid-back new track.

The track was produced by London-based producer Jack Suddaby, and features on the upcoming EP Take Two, due out on September 22nd.