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Another great track from Oakland-based Aussie Hazel English, coming in the wake of the equally dreamy Never Going Home and It's Not Real earlier this year. Fix is another slice of California sun-tinged shoegaze-pop that beckons in the start of autumn. Taken from English's debut EP, out later this year.
After a number of EPs and three albums Girls Names took a typically nonconformist move to mark their return, launching 11-minute long single Zero Triptych, which got played in full on Radio 1 but doesn't feature here at all. Instead Arms Around A Vision distils the Belfast band's dreary-yet-dreamy outward looking vision into twelve tracks of sharp post-punk.
Discussing the album, frontman Cathal Cully states, "We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life ... For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art."
Like their contemporaries The Horrors and Interpol, Girls Names wear their influences proudly. You can hear plenty of elements of Can, Neu, Joy Division, Brian Eno here, together with traces of the New Romantic movement.
The warm electronic interludes of (Obsession) and (Convalescence) divide Arms Around A Vision into three acts, acting as brief moments of reprieve between the bursts of aggression. Self-produced by the band and engineered by Dan Rejmer, they carve out a soundscape that draws from a number of Europe's modern movements - Italian futurism, Russian constructivism and German's Zero Group. There is a modernist bent to Girls Names' sound - their music at times drowning in the simultaneous riot of conventional instruments played unconventionally together with unconventional instruments. Drums and guitars combine with sax, sheet metal and deliberately broken guitars.
Whilst the style isn't new, it is delivered with significant with aplomb. Arms Around A Vision storms in with the foreboding and appropriately named Reticence, a track of two-halves that at first weaves a slowly coiled threat before unraveling to leave something far more loose and free-willed.
Recent single A Hunger Artist still feels effortlessly cool - it is the perfect snub, a coy little 'fuck you' tied up into a bow... Harsh strummed guitars aggressively drive forward as Cully sounds a little nonchalantly delivers his passive aggressive play. The screeching brass amid a wave of distortion creates a chaotic feeling that the whole song could fall over at any moment, making it all the more exciting in its slow building cacophony.
Closing with the pregnant and menacing I Was You, Arms Around A Vision crawls to a darkly cynical conclusion that also grants the album its title. Cully's vocals swoop around the nightmarish musical landscape before leaving the band to fade to black. An album that achieves much through style and attitude, even if it feels like there might not be much left underneath.
Arms Around A Vision is released on 2 October through Tough Love. Stream I Was You below and watch the video for A Hunger Artist:
Wilinout is the new track from Brooklyn-based musician IYVES, who originally hails from Boulder, Colorado. Previously operating under the name Hanah, IVYES' new track has been created with production work from Tei Shi and Ryan Egan collaborator Luca Buccellati.
Wilinout is a laid back melodic soul track featuring soft keys, big swatches of sound and IYVES' hushed vocals. It borders on chill-wave, a little like an R&B take on Tears For Fears' Pharaohs. Can't say much better than that.
In her own words, IVYES describes Wilinout: "While writing 'Wilinout' I wanted to tap into an old school R&B/soul melody and bring a nostalgic sensibility to the song. I wrote this song during a pivotal time in a relationship. It’s that moment where you realize that a change needs to happen but something is holding you back. Sometimes the fear of change can paralyze you and this song is discovering that state of being in between."
MUNA are LA three-piece Katie, Josette and Naomi and Loudspeaker follows their previous release Promise.
Loudspeaker is an entirely female produced intimate electronic pop record. Here more than ever MUNA call to mind Haim, only reared purely on 80s soft rock. The track is an irresistibly forthright reclamation of one's voice having spent a period in silence - the kind of track anyone who has ever felt like they have lost a part of their identity at the end of a relationship will recognise.
Describing the track, MUNA said: “It can be really difficult to choose your own comfort over the comfort of others, specifically if you are taught by society to do the opposite. We hope people will hear it and gain a little bit of courage to articulate their own battles and grievances, all the while knowing that they don't have to take the blame for everything they've been through. Oh, and also it's cool when girls are loud.”
Love the track and the message behind it. Check it out below:
Delaire's new track Belief is the kind is sparkling synth-driven R&B you can expect from Jessy Ware combined with Roísín Murphy, full of the singer's vocals and ice-like shifting melodies.
The track moves through three distinct phases - the whispered opening through to a dramatic middle section that slowly builds until the instrumentation drops back to reveal Delaire's exposed and confessional vocals as she gently asks "Don't you know that your love is enough for me?"
Listen to the track below and if you like it grab the download in exchange for signing up to Delaire's mailing list here.