The 5 best songs of the week

Clipping.

Change The Channel

Clipping’s sixth album Dead Channel Sky (March 14th on Sub Pop), is teased with this frantic cyberpunk rap track, the third preview of the record after ‘Run It’ and ‘Keep Pushing’.

Dropping the horrorcore theme for this album, ‘Change The Channel’ brings ’90s dance sounds – the type that made their way onto the Hackers soundtrack and The Matrix to their sound, with Daveed Diggs rapidfire flow matched in the tempo stakes.

Spooklet

Silence Froid

The new single from Hannah Worrall’s electronic project Sppooklet after the recent  IN THE BELLY OF THE MOTHER EP and remix EP, continues the French-accented bodied electronic music found on those releases.

The treated choral vocals on this one add some magic to the track, an already beguiling ricocheting production.

Spooklet’s headline show takes place on the 25th January in Workman’s Club in Dublin.

“Silence Froid or Cold Shoulder in English, tells a story of unresolved tension with another person or another part of one’s self. Inspired by the lyrical themes of this track, the instrumental creates a sharp edged bench for the vocals to sit on top of. With heavily gated vocals that suffocate each word, distorted and pitched choir samples that continuously build to fill the space and a kit that bounces chaotically from left to right, the listener is left to imagine which path SPOOKLET will fall into next.”

 

Spooklet

Saint Etienne

Half Light

The Saint Etienne trio of Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley (who we talked to for the Nialler9 Podcast last year) have never stopped releasing music since their big hit ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ in 1992, and in December they released their twelfth studio album The Night.

I heard ‘Half Light’ only this week, and its a sub two-minute gentle atmosphere sounded like the drawing of breath and the endless possibility of a new day.

Skinner

Sour Milk

I won’t go on too much about this one as I’m involved in the release in a manager capacity, but critic hat off, proud to have the full-length Skinner album today. More info below.

‘Sour Milk’ is the focus track today, an urgent track concerned with modern malaise, shot through with a Gilla Band-esque urgency (Dara Kiely taught Aaron how to scream effectively, which you can also hear in vocal exercise form on ‘Do Re Mi Fa”).

Waking up on Tuesday
I thought it was a Thursday
I couldn’t find my hat
So I started wearing lampshades
Panicking in Centra
Tearing up in Tesco
Crying at the tills
Because I couldn’t find the pesto

The debut album from multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Aaron Corcoran’s no wave project takes inspiration from the New York scene in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s; specifically, the titular variety freak show that took place at the 57 Club in New York from 1978 to 1983. The club was known for its free-form art shows, a debaucherous wild riposte to creeping commerciality of modern culture of the time.

The ten-track collection features previous singles ‘New Wave Vaudeville’, ‘Tell My Ma’, ‘Calling In Sick’ and ‘Geek Love’ and is released on vinyl through Faction Records.

Squid

Building 650

English art-rock quintet Squid’s new album Cowards is released on February 7th on WARP, and the Japan trip-inspired ‘Building 650’, which shapeshifts from its foundation of alt-rock to a growing orchestral influence.

“It’s a song inspired by our first ever trip to Japan. We played the Summersonic festival in 2022, luckily we were booked to play 2 days after the COVID travel ban had been lifted, because of this we felt like some of the only tourists in Tokyo. On the plane I read in the Miso Soup by Ryu Murikami and watched Lost in Translation out of excitement and later decided to write lyrics about being an outsider visiting Japan, including a very particular type of loneliness one can feel visiting a country that is so different from their own. This loneliness feels exaggerated in Tokyo, on the surface it’s hectic and full of people but when you listen, it’s eerily quiet.”

The video was directed by longtime collaborator Felix Geen who shot the video in Japan alongside local directors Daisuke Hasegawa and Kuya Tatsujo.

“For this script, I believed it was necessary to incorporate not only inspiration from the novel (In The Miso Soup) but also scenes from contemporary Japan,” says Kuya. “The wave of technology is overwhelming, and an intense sense of fear, driven by the need to interact with others, envelops the city. Amidst this, I think I was able to depict the young people struggling to live and the landscape of the city.”