Pizzagirl
Highschool
I’m caught up in a dream by the new track from Liverpool musician Pizzagirl, Highschool.
The hooks here are just breathless - this is pure 80s beauty, very reminiscent of Prefab Sprout or the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie. Earnest vocals and melancholic keys give this a sad and introspective feel that I love.
Real name Liam Brown, Highschool is the first track to be taken from Pizzagirl's forthcoming sophomore EP Season 2, due in November through Heist or Hit.
Ralph
Weather
Weather is the latest track from Toronto pop star Ralph, and it’s another lovely record that feels both modern and timeless.
Blending soft chords and gentle vocals, Weather paints a picture of someone who is lost in the uncertainty of a relationship that is still in its early days. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether a connection will endure and outlive its initial environmental triggers… The summer sun may make love burn hot, but will it still be warm as winter sets in.
Appropriately, Ralph’s debut album is due this Autumn. Check out Weather below, and look out for her on tour over the next few months - you can find tour dates at the bottom of this post.
Skylar Spence
Carousel
Carousel is the kind of pop song that captures that optimistic-but-totally-lost-in-love feeling of meeting someone and discovering just how into them you are. That dizzy and magical realisation that the person who brings you so much joy somehow also happens to get a similar level of joy from being with you.
Infused with disco sounds - a little chic, a little Daft Punk - what makes Skylar Spence’s track great is the contrast between the music, upbeat and sunny, and the vocal, which sounds unmoored and overwhelmed. And that feels so right, because the form of love Carousel describes is disconcerting and a little terrifying… It represents an extreme form of vulnerability, as you effectively outsource a chunk of your emotional happiness to someone else.
This is Skylar’s first release since his breakout album Prom King, and was written following a trip to Disney World with his girlfriend. With a chorus that is deliberately cyclical, the track is a reference to the experience of a carousel.
Check out Carousel below:
Stasney Mav
Bullet
Stasney Mav is a new musician who writes, plays and produces all of her own music out of her base in Nashville, TN, and just happens to be both in your face and gay. It’s a definite positive to find people with different voices and backgrounds not just making music but also producing…
Stasney Mav’s real name is Caroline Shumate and Bullet is her debut solo release, having previously been involved in side project The Queen and King. And let’s be clear: if Bullet is anything to go by then Shumate has a bright future ahead of her producing and making music.
Bullet is the sort of song my feeble middle-aged straight-white-guy body just can’t help but move to. There is this moment when the beat kicks in at the start of the chorus and it feels like a warm electronic body-blow, as though you just got smacked in the face my your own emotional irrationality. This is sensitive and raw and honest - acknowledging that you can feel two opposing things about a person at the same time, yet them both be true. It’s also catchy as hell.
Bad With Phones
Kiss The Matter
Bad With Phones is a London/Berlin based songwriter and producer with a penchant for dogs and making music in his shed with his friends.
Following on from his debut single Needles, Bad With Phones is back with a new EP, Bang Bang Chicken. Taken from that EP and available to check out here is Kiss The Matter.
Kiss The Matter is a track resplendent in warm synths and softly sung vocals tracing out weird lyrical motifs against swirling melodies. Kiss The Matter feels both uplifting and compassionate and deeply pedestrian. A lover tries to keep things together whilst faced with the mundanity of modern life. Sometimes we just can’t make the pieces fit... Is it me or is it you?
Check out Kiss The Matter below and listen to the full EP Bang Bang Chicken here.
