Hello world,
Here’s your latest FP Picks update. We have fabulous fresh cuts fm Nick Cave, Vampire Weekend, Waxahatchee & lots more. If you like what you hear please follow and share this playlist, it helps us keep doing our thing by getting the algorithms on our side. Also please support the artists featured in any way you can!
Until next week
Helen (Futureproof) x
IDestroy – Headphones
Punk outfit IDestroy have dropped their energetic new single Headphones, a powerful song about women being told not to wear their headphones while walking home alone, as they always have to stay alert for danger. The band state: “Music is a way we can use our voice to talk about the things that mean the most to us. Headphones is a call for women’s safety to be taken more seriously.” A great infectious punk track with an important message to those in power that women should feel safe in all situations without watching over their shoulder. I hear the band put on a raucous live show – can’t wait to get in on the action! Great stuff!
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God
Wow – an absolute belter from the songwriting guru that is Nick Cave along with his Bad Seeds! The recognisable hushed tones of Cave engage you at the beginning and, once you’re hooked on the lyrics, the choir comes in and the Wild God emerges with great power. Crucially, he tells us that it might be especially your moment to join with the wild god, ‘if you’re feeling lonely and if you’re feeling blue’. Having lost two children, Cave is talking here from knowledge of the darkness. This makes the call of this song all the more authentic. Can’t stop listening to this one – energetic, poignant, beautiful – a definite new fave anthem!
Elbow – Balu
Manchester’s Elbow have dropped their gritty, synth-heavy new single Balu from new album Audio Vertical. It sees frontman Guy Garvey sing over an infectious groove and triumphant horns, with the song finding Elbow in a heavier, more explosive sonic space. A press release states: ”Balu shares much musical DNA with the wider album; a focus on rhythm, a willingness to experiment with new sounds, and a love of beats that reflects the freedom the band felt throughout the recording process.” Described by UNCUT as a gothic funk groove in a recent 4 star album review, the track title is a reference to the nickname of Guy Garvey’s nephew (‘a great bloke’) and provides further hints for fans of the gnarly, seedy grooves that power the album.
English Teacher – R&B
Leeds post-punk band English Teacher have shared raging new single R&B from their upcoming debut album This Could Be Texas. Frontwoman Lily Fontaine shared: “Being a woman of color fronting a band shouldn’t even be a thing to talk about; we need to just get on with it – only then will the narrative around that change.” The track, which was released a few years ago but has been re-recorded for the album, is a spiky one about people assuming that she makes R&B. About a former partner, Lily states: “When I was with him I had writer’s block and to add insult to irony, the only idea I had was for an R&B top line”
Vampire Weekend – Classical
Vampire Weekend give a history lesson on cruelty through the ages on new upbeat, melodious single Classical, taken from upcoming album Only God Was Above Us. A bright a cheery orchestral track which tells of the horrors of history, with a chaotic horn section – another unique offering from Vampire Weekend. The album was inspired and haunted by 20th Century New York City, and recorded all over the world, from Manhattan to Los Angeles to London and Tokyo.
Divorce – Gears
Divorce have shared new single Gears which delves into the challenges of juggling multiple identities and responsibilities. The song itself reflects this duality, starting with a soft and melodic soundscape before morphing into a more jittery and intense one. Lead singer and guitarist Felix Mackenzie-Barrow explains “Gears was written when I’d just moved to London and was working very long hours whilst trying to keep up with increasing band commitments for Divorce. I was spending all of my time working or playing shows and couldn’t maintain any kind of social life or keep up with the spending a social life felt like it would cost. The song came out of those frustrations.”
Waxahatchee – Bored
Waxahatchee has dropped new single Bored from recently released album Tigers Blood. In the music video, Katie Crutchfield (aka Waxahatchee) performs the song onstage at the cozy dive bar and sings on a three-wheeled motorcycle while blanketed in golden hour sunlight. It’s a swaggering midtempo country-rock jam about being sick of people’s shit. She states: “I wrote Bored in the wake of a friendship that ended badly & I was pretty shattered by it. I learned a lot from how the whole thing played out. I certainly could have done things differently and I certainly had a part in why it ended badly, but this is one of those situations where anger was called for and was the only authentic place from which to write about what I was experiencing.” Crank it up & let it out!
Four Tet – Daydream Repeat
Four Tet has dropped the upbeat single Daydream Repeat from new album Three, a lovely six-minute dance track that doesn’t sacrifice beauty for propulsion or vice versa. It’s got a big, bouncy techno beat, and there’s also what sounds like a harp dropping a shimmering melody all over everything. After closing Coachella alongside Fred Again and Skrillex last year and then playing his own spellbinding shows in the summer, the producer’s profile has never been higher, and the new album sets Four Tet up for a productive 2024.
Julia Holter – Evening Mood
Julia Holter has shared the surreal single Evening Mood, taken from new album Something In The Room She Moves, whose lush sound was influenced by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, her daughter’s favorite film. “I was inspired by the transformability of creatures, and how this malleability works alongside our capacity for love. I wanted everything to feel very liquid,” Holter explained. The song features a “heavily filtered ultrasound heartbeat” sent through a phaser. “I wanted it to sound like it was inside the body.” The album’s title was in part inspired by The Beatles’ song Something and its lyrics, “Something in the way she moves.” Holter, a lifelong Beatles fan, has been singing Beatles songs to her daughter at night.
Angélica Garcia – Juanita
LA based pop experimentalist Angélica Garcia recently released new single Juanita and she states: “Juanita is my take on a cumbia. Many cumbias have lyrics about pain and longing. My intention was for the tension and confusion in the song to feel like remembering a past life. I wanted to capture what the shadow side of grief does to us. This song in many ways feels heavily connected to my ethnic and spiritual cultures.” Angélica has discovered and tapped into a fresh pop perspective, creating music that is searing and borderless, free of cultural confinement and challenging the notion that singing in English is a prerequisite for creating American music. Love it!
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