Stream: Go - Hugh

Hugh first featured on these pages a full three years ago, and they have been a regular fixture ever since. Now on the eve of their debut album, the London-based group have just put out Go, their newest single.

One of my favourite tracks of Hugh's so far, Go is like a plea for release... Sometimes you know you need something to happen, but you can't convince yourself to take a certain step. It feels easier to put the decision in someone else's hands, to have someone else to make the decision for you. Two people pushing each other forward, inch by inch. Just give me the green light: don't need no words to say, if you'll just stay then I'll know.

Go is inspired by vocalist Izzy Brooks' experience having meeting a boy who made her feel like she was underwater:

"I remember there was green light flooding in from the surface, my lungs hurt and the excitement was so heavy it almost felt like I couldn't breathe. Though I knew I probably should have jumped out, I stayed down beneath the waves, facing this person who had this hypnotic hold over me - it was crazy"

Continuing their recent trend towards a slightly more electronic sound, Go channels Caribou and Hot Chip together with Beach House. Hugh's debut album Love, Hugh will be released on 25 May.

Available on streaming and online stores now. Debut album 'Love, Hugh' dropping May 25th :-) Can't swim, I touch the sides Soon sinking Deep inside This mirky water that we're in As I dive down into blue I wanna be washed up with you, Submerge me Let it pull you in Just gimme the Green Light Go Keep making me feel like Woah Don't need no words to say If you just stay then i'll know Just give me the Green Light Go Keep making me feel like Woah Cause if you're wanting me Then 1,2,3 lets go You're hands release the dice I burn up needing ice Relieve me Help erase this heat You got me ticking like a bomb going off And every inch you give speeds up the clock Its beating Wont you rescue me Time's ticking, don't wanna wait, can't hold it down, not for much longer, lord help me, take me to church, confess my thirst, all of this hunger, time's ticking, don't wanna wait, can't hold it down, not for much longer, times ticking, don't wanna wait, and i don't wanna wait

Video: Right Now - Haim

I can barely get the door open from all the emails I’ve let pile up over the past week (if they are from you, I’m sorry - life has a way of happening to you when you aren’t expecting it). I’m stepping straight over all those emails to go out the door and grab you by the shoulders in order to say that actually, all you really need to hear is this.

Haim haven’t given us anything properly new since their debut album in 2014 and then all of a sudden here they are, in all the dramatic glory of this brooding Paul Thomas Anderson shot video. This short five minute take places a viewfinder into the studio for a live take on Right Now, the first song from forthcoming album Something To Tell You.

And it’s pretty perfect in its imperfection. Feedback, Este’s clipped heels, Danielle’s unfussy vocals: it all comes together in a way that just screams how much practice it has taken to make it all look just this effortless.

I’ll call out three moments:

1. That first Este “Right now, right now”, cuddled up against a thick as molasses bass line
2. When Alana’s guitar just blows 1 out of the bloody water. It’s like varnished oak, speaker magnets and burning incense.
3. Both Este and Alana’s drum outro, which gives me goosebumps EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Danielle does stuff too, like pull it all together. It's almost certainly not cool to like Haim any more, but this makes me not care a jot. It’s everything that isn’t here that really makes this what it is... Bags and bags of space, acres of expensive high quality sounding space.

Stream: Stop Me (Stop You) - Nick Murphy

Sometimes a track finds you and you aren't quite sure how you had previously got by without it. This is definitely one of those songs.

I've been a fan of Chet Faker since his debut album Built On Glass, yet I had missed the news that he is releasing his next album under his own name. Whilst it sounds like he is leaving the door open on the possibility of more Chet Faker material in the future, working as Murphy appears to signify a move to a more raw style of songwriting.

Since announcing this new direction Murphy has unveiled a couple of songs - Fear Less and this, arguable one of the best things he has ever recorded. Stop Me (Stop You) actually came out in October but I hadn't heard it until I stumbled across it on Apple Music last week, and even then it was initially only in its edited Stop Me form. The full version ads an extended coda together with those all important brackets and in comparison the edit feels like half a thought short of realisation. A record label's compromise no doubt, but a compromise in every sense.

You could view Stop Me (Stop You) as two separate tracks joined by an electro bridge but these two parts directly reference each other, Murphy seemingly taking two separate perspectives on the same dialogue. Stop Me is insistent, determined and energised to Stop You's fragile honesty. The combination is intriguing and, to my ears at least, beautiful.

In comparison to Chet Faker the production here is less measured. This piece of music is not a modest statement. Working with Dave Harrington (the half of Darkside that isn't Nicolas Jaar), Stop Me (Stop You) boasts layers of synths, guitar, chugging bass guitar and Harrington's whirlwind drumming, giving the track's first half a chaotic but infectious drum & bass rock feel akin to Bon Iver lost at a rave. Following a deeper voyage into a full on dance track, the closing third lets Murphy's vocals take centre stage against a slowly played piano backing and ghostly atmospherics. This is a track all about that contrast, and it pulls it off with aplomb.

I struggle to put my finger on exactly what it is I love about this track so much. The sheer ambition and energy is certainly part of it but I also love the emotional ambiguity. That bipolar narrative appeals to the uncertainty we all have. The inherent inconsistency of our internal monologue: I'm not always sure who I am either. And Murphy's closing words feel like a salve. None of us quite know what we are doing, and that's probably okay: it's the journey that matters, not the destination.

Stream: Maintain - Vilde

Vilde is the new project from Australia-born now Stockholm-based musician Thomas Savage. Previously frontman with Kins, Vilde has released a string of singles as he builds up to an album piece by piece.

Recalling Wild Beasts' more recent work, Maintain is a sinister aural assault - all brooding falsetto vocals and haunted synths. It takes a certain kind of track to create a genuine level of uncertainty as to whether it is actually playing correctly or whether your device is glitching out, and Maintain managed to catch me with that trick not just once but twice.

This is the kind of track that feels equally at home in your earbuds on a lonely rainy Tuesday morning as a beer soaked Thursday night. I just want more, longer, deeper.

Describing the song, Savage says:

"The subject matter of the song is somewhat of a crammed amalgamation of ideas. Part inspired by the film ‘Ace in the Hole’, where a news reporter begins to twist events in a dark way to gain fame through his portrayal of the story. There’s some pretty bleak imagery in the lyrics, yet bits of optimism seep through too, provoking a sense of solitude, release & calm."

Catch Vilde live later this year:

July 21 – Kantine Am Berghain, Berlin w/ Foreign/National July 29 – Old Blue Last, London w/ Foreign/National

Stream: Won't Look Back - Geowulf

Geowulf’s Don’t Talk About You has been bouncing around for a few weeks since a friend recommended it to me… It’s the kind of beautiful pop record that makes me swoon - one part desperation, one part determined independence - and the band brought it all together in a way that sounds like Warpaint started soundtracking 80s teen movies.

New track Won't Look Back further ramps up the 80s cinematic references with keys and lots of shoe gaze paired with a huge hook of a chorus. It’s the bridge that really soars here though, the melodies skimming along like they are bouncing off the Karman line.

“Won’t Look Back is about trying to look forward and deciding to be excited about what might be next.” says Star, Geowulf’s singer. “Toma had the idea for it a long time ago, maybe a year or so, but it really came together recently.”

You can check out the band live this month and next:

APRIL PIAS Nites, London (Thu 20th) Hit The North (Fri 28th) Live at Leeds (Sat 29th)

MAY Hoxton Hall (Wed 3rd) The Great Escape (Fri 19th) Australia BBQ @ Hoxton Bar and Grill (Sun 21st)

Geowulf - Won't Look Back Available to Stream/Download here: http://smarturl.it/GeowulfWLB Produced & Mixed by Duncan Mills Released by @37Adventures