Listen – don’t even get us started on how quick this year is going. Ay caramba!
Alongside our bumper playlist for the year (capturing everything we’ve been loving from January through to now), the ‘Listening Post’ returns this month and is rammed with some top tunes, 20 of them in fact – old and new, all gold!
Whilst you’re here, why not get involved with our new podcast? ’60 Minutes or less’ has been up and running for over five months now, featuring interesting chats with Protomartyr, Paul Hanley (The Fall), Omni, Everything Everything, Field Music, The Utopia Strong, USA Nails, METZ, HALO MAUD, Jamie Lenman and Pissed Jeans! When you’re done here, get yourself listening to the new episodes and give it a rating on your favourite streaming service!
The Maghreban x Omar – Waiting
(Connection)
If you’re anything like me, you just can’t get enough of that 1991 sweet jam that is ‘There’s Nothing Like This’, the title track from British soul singer Omar’s debut album. Consider us tickled pink then with the recent discovery of a new Omar collaboration with southern outfit The Maghreban, a proper VHS video nasty style house track that well and truly gets right under your skin. Proper belter this!
Lene Lovich – Lucky Number
(Stateless)
I know there are cycles in fashion but bloody hell, doesn’t this sound like it came out last week, rather than 1979! A killer wonk-pop earworm from English-American recording artist Lene Lovich, there’s touches of – well – just about everything in this, from Pottery to PYLON to The B-52’s to Sparks.
Jordi Savall – Doina & Hora (Roumanie)
(Espirit Des Balkans [Balkan Spirit])
Five minutes plus of delight here on ‘Doina & Hora’, Jordi Savall conducting his Hespèrion XXI ensemble – featuring musicians from Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece and Turkey – to delirious highs. One for the kitchen dancers!
Uranium Club – Viewers Like You
(Infants Under The Bulb)
Fuck yeah, man – just when you thought The Minneapolis Uranium Club couldn’t get any gnarlier, they chuck a load of brass into the mix for delectable results! Raging as expected, ‘Viewers Like You’ is taken from their fourth album ‘Infants Under The Bulb’ (out now via Static Shock Records / Anti Fade Records), their first full length since the release of ‘The Cosmo Cleaners’ in 2018.
Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t It Be Good
(Human Racing)
The Absolute 80s love-in continues at Birthday Cake For Breakfast HQ ever since the purchase of a DAB radio for the kitchen. They have a ‘No Repeat Guarantee’ by all accounts, but you wouldn’t know it as ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’ is on all the bloody time! No complaints here, mind – such a banging blast of nostalgia it is, we’re hooked!
Cassandra Jenkins – Only One
(My Light, My Destroyer)
NYC artist Cassandra Jenkins first captured our attention with the release of the brilliantly titled ‘An Overview on Phenomenal Nature’, her 2021 album that we discovered off the back of the news that she was due to tour with Purple Mountains before the tragic death of David Berman in 2019. New single ‘Only One’ is a welcome return, a dreamy new cut from her forthcoming third album, ‘My Light, My Destroyer’, due out next month.
Crack Cloud – Blue Kite
(Red Mile)
Here we are again – another Crack Cloud album announcement, another stone-cold banger of a lead single to become obsessed with. ‘Blue Kite’ is their first offering at their new home of Jagjaguwar and leans more towards the type of soaring anthemic pop they’ve been moving towards of late, the six minutes flying by in an instant of catharsis.
Sneaks – Down In The Woods
(Gymnastics)
With a bassline that just won’t quit, ‘Down In The Woods’ is a pacey, hypnotic affair from Washington D.C. artist Eva Moolchan, a.k.a. Sneaks. With a runtime of 52 seconds, you can get lost in the groove again and again!
Cosmo Sheldrake – Cuckoo
(Wake Up Calls)
This song absolutely hypnotised our dog when it came on the wireless just the other week. From field recordist, producer and composer extraordinaire Cosmo Sheldrake, the instrumental ‘Cuckoo’ is the sound of immersing yourself in the trees with the birdsong.
Midnight Oil – Beds Are Burning
(Diesel and Dust)
We’ve been Absolute 80s pilled for a good month now and this is one of the big hitters that’s had us hooked. Starting off with thoughts of ‘what the fuck is this?’, it didn’t take long for it to sink its teeth in. A top 10 hit over here when it was released in the late 80s, but completely new to these ears in our year of the lord 2024.
(Photo Credit: Kian Boyle)
Metronomy x Panic Shack – It’s Good To Be Back
(Small World – Special Edition)
I was at Band on the Wall in Manchester the other week for ‘Bad Dreams’, an all-dayer headlined by visiting art-punks Bodega. One of the supports came from Welsh punks Panic Shack and they smashed it, which had us looking back into their catalogue and boy was it nice to revisit their Metronomy remix for the latter’s last record. Very much putting their spin on it, the Cardiff natives turn a pop bop into an anthemic full-pelt ripper.
Egg Hunt – We All Fall Down
(2 Songs)
Putting in the research for a forthcoming podcast episode (did we mention ’60 Minutes or less’?), I’ve been listening to the audiobook for ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’ of late, so it’s been a trip discovering side projects and such from the hardcore elite. Former Minor Threat members Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson put out just the one raging single as Egg Hunt (during a trip to England no less), but that’s more than enough.
Fair play, we first posted about The Bug Club in 2021, bigging up their ace debut single ‘We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’’. Blast forward three years and they’ve only bloody signed to Sub Pop?! Proper grafters, they’re always on tour and have since put out two full lengths without a drop in quality – the fuzzy ‘Quality Pints’ continues on the theme and is heaps of fun!
Mock Tudors – Hair of the Dog
(Good Drinkin’ Times)
On new single ‘Hair of the Dog’, three-headed, trackie-loving Sheffield outfit Mock Tudors have done it once more, penning a stupendously infectious rock dream for the lugholes. From a forthcoming ten track record of expected rippers.
Clairo – Sexy To Someone
(Charm)
Capturing the type of nostalgic warmth so expertly produced by Denver’s Tennis, solo artist Claire Cottrill a.k.a. Clairo wows on this sultry cut from her forthcoming third record ‘Charm’, out next month. A sun-soaked pop hit that sounds like it might be more at home in someone’s record collection in 1973.
Did someone ask for a big Welsh bop? Well you’re in luck, chuck, ‘cus Carmarthen trio Adwaith have got just the ticket with their latest single, ‘MWY’! A proper good time of a track, it’s impossible to stay still when this thumper is on!
Kino Motel – Repeater
(Visions)
Having once appeared on these very pages as 1/3 of German-based noise-rockers HEADS., Ed Fraser returns with Rosa Mercedes as part of ‘Beach Goth’ duo, Kino Motel. From a new album out earlier this year (their first full length), ‘Repeater’ is a hazy, cinematic fuzz-fest.
Fair play, it’s a good band name, eh? Good luck googling these cats… With a sound not too dissimilar to the brilliant Tapir!, ’Almost Gone’ is a tender, beautiful piece from south London quartet Potato’s forthcoming debut EP ‘Stew’ (good stuff), out next month via Mookin Records.
Irish intersectional feminist quartet M(h)aol well and truly captivate on the driving ‘Pursuit’, a song about the all too real fear women have of just trying to get home. Thumping to a shouted crescendo, like Gilla Band before them, this is head-wrecking music to really dance to.
Chinese American Bear – Feelin’ Fuzzy ( 毛绒绒的感觉 )
Love this funky little wonk-pop earworm from mando-pop / rock duo Chinese American Bear (who’ve just signed to Moshi Moshi Records) – a song influenced by singer Anne Tong’s upbringing in a Chinese immigrant household, wanting to have fun whilst under the roof of a strict “stereotypical tiger mom”.
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