New Music Weekly # 24 | Radiohead, Destroyer, King Krule
New Music Weekly is your one stop shop for new releases in the world of music each and every week. From the best of the best, to some of the rest, Mark Conroy is here to give you the lowdown on what you might have missed. This week: Radiohead, Bjork, King Krule and more…
Radiohead ‘Lift’
So I’ll admit, there are two problems with calling the latest from Radiohead “new music”, considering the fan favourite was recorded twenty years ago and it officially got its release earlier this year when OK Computer retrospective OKNOTOK was released. But now with a music video to boot, I thought ‘Lift’ deserved another shout. The track remains an effortless road not taken for the band, a mid 90’s alt-rock hit single that never was. Regardless of what the album version would have sounded like, the song is still a floating gem, anchored by the nostalgic twang of the period’s guitar lines, as Thom Yorke’s nihilistic lyrics of self-isolation contradict the transient joy of the melody.
!!! ‘The Long Walk’
The dance-punk veterans !!! released their 7th studio album Shake The Shudder earlier this year and now they’ve announced a limited edition hand-stamped white label 12″ EP called Shake The Shut Up. ‘The Long Walk’ is the closer for the EP, a choral driven stomp that will have you dancing up and down the church pews.
Destroyer ‘Tinseltown Swimming in Blood’
Destroyer’s latest single may be ‘Swimming in blood’ but it’s also drenched in atmosphere. It’s a low-key, luxuriously languid effort that’s paced to perfection. The oblique lyrics, sung in drunk despair as if front man Dan Bejar just reached the tail-end of a fifth, are typically melancholic missives about the Hollywood’s chewing of humble ambition. “I was a dreamer / Watch me leave” he laments as he’s backed up by the hookiest of New Order bass lines, Soft Cell synths and some gentle horn work.
King Krule ‘Dum Surfer’
Indie star on the rise and cult act King Krule’s ‘Dum Surfer’ might well be his strangest song yet, and that’s saying a lot. With a video of him and his band as zombies, the track suitably starts out as a an ominous dirge as Archy Marshall gothically sings like he’s playing his own version of Vincent Price’s younger self. Then the horns come in and it’s like the Specials on Halloween night. I think it’s good, but I’m also not quite sure.
Bjork ‘The Gate’
Bjork announced that the name of her new album will be Utopia, which is due to be released this November. With that announcement she also dropped its lead single, ‘The Gate’. A spectral slow burner, the Icelandic songstress sings first into mournful acceptance about the end of relationship and then in hopeful optimism about future possibilities. Produced by Arca, it’s both gloomily atmospheric and triumphant.
Alex Lahey ‘I Haven’t been taking care of myself’
There are few acts that does superbly straightforward rock-song writing as well as Alex Lahey. ‘I Haven’t Been Taking Care of Myself’ is a song that, through the dichotomy of its sound and lyrics, captures the uneasy existence of falling for someone who brings out the worst in you. The snappy drum beat and exhilarating guitar lines suggest the carefree feeling of head over heels devotion, while the evident consequences are presented in the self-loathing words she sings. It’s the most upbeat song about a shitty partner you’ll hear all year.
The Weather Station ‘Kept it all to myself’
The Weather Station’s new single is like the lonely version of a Belle And Sebastian song. Tamara Lindeman sings in hurried missives aimed at herself as she’s frustrated at having love to share but no one to share it with. It’s charming.
