Watch: Make U Mine — Morgen

Make U Mine opens like a glitter doused grunge record — guitar notes, and bass guitar-led melodies plucked out as clattering drums roll in, all obscuring the vocal. Yet, it is quickly clear this is something more pop than a conventional grunge record. As we arrive at the verse, Morgen’s vocals are front and centre in the mix, an electronic kick drum pulsing as that glossy vocal depicts the complexity of a relationship that never quite found its footing.

The relative sheen of that verse is what really allows the chorus here to rip — applying a polish-grunge-polish take to the Pixies’ age-old quiet-loud-quiet model as Morgen shouts, “I wanna make you mine… again”. A bridge only adds to the high-octane pleasures, heavily filtered samples cutting through like a mangled electronic guitar. The result has all of the desperate energy that comes with needing something you can’t have.

Her first track of 2023, Make U Mine was produced by Morgen herself, together with Joe Mason, Matias Mora and Cary Singer. Describing the song, Morgen says:

“I wrote ‘Make U Mine’ about the nostalgia of a friendship I lost through unsaid feelings and miscommunication. It’s about the veil that time puts on memories, making them seem better than they actually were, and how that leaves you longing for something never even happened.”

Check out Make U Mine below, and look out for the forthcoming EP of the same name, due soon:

Listen: L.S.D. (Love So Damaged) — Charlotte Plank

Charlotte Plank’s new single L.S.D. (Love So Damaged), to give it its full name, kicks 2023 off with the kind of explosive burst of energy we need right now. Fuzzy guitar sizzles beneath Plank’s vocals as she confesses, “I play him like a video game, like a video game I do”. The song’s initial grungy elements giving way to confounded expectations as rolling drum & bass kicks in.

The sound 21-year-old Charlotte creates here is quite unlike anything I have heard before… A distinctively British take on the brutal honesty of anti-folk, evoking the vulnerability of Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Kate Nash, but thrust into an unexpected soundscape. Plank’s diverse influences, which include Winehouse but also take in Nirvana, Four Tet and the Prodigy, give rise to her kitchen-sink sound. Beyond the confluence of drum & bass meets grunge and anti-folk, L.S.D. utilises unexpected production flourishes – a record scratch moment, a telephone ring as she references making a desperate call. The result is infectiously organic and alive, despite its electric techniques.

L.S.D. is a song about a somewhat toxic relationship, with co-dependency, love and hate all tied up in one person. As Plank explains:

“This was written about the turbulent, habitual, addictive cycle of being in a toxic relationship. Whereby you know that it’s bad for you, you continue to hurt each other out of spite and lose respect for each other, yet it’s like you both subconsciously crave the problems and toxicity within one another and keep the rose-tinted glasses on yet another last chance despite your views of love being distorted and forever damaged.”

The feeling that opens L.S.D., of a relationship feeling like a video game, is one I am all too familiar with… Sometimes people feel like puzzles, with levels to progress through and situations to optimise your stat points against. It’s an unhealthy notion that can lead you to contorting yourself into someone you don’t actually want to be.

Watch: False Aralia — Pink Sky

Pink Sky are husband and wife duo Angelica and Ryan, whose journey into music is framed in grief and re-growth. The pair themselves encapsulate this in the form of a formative observation: “Sometimes life falls apart before it’s put back together”.

Two years into the couple’s marriage, Ryan was stopped in traffic and almost killed by a speeding semi-truck that hit his car. Following years of recovery, helped by Angelica teaching him how to paint, things improved. Sadly, a complicated and devastating pregnancy loss led to further pain… This time Ryan looked to share something with Angelica, gifting her a drum machine, enabling them to reconnect through music.

False Aralia is the result of that reconnection — a self-described “musical dam bursting”, as inspiration came from trading melodies. The song resonates with that connection, an emotional gravity running through the slow, synth-heavy melodies created by the pair. As Angelica sings, “…I lost you, and you were just too sad to stay around any more” it’s not hard to envisage that she is saying things here that may have been hard to articulate directly to Ryan. Those vocals loop, enmeshed within themselves as drums snap and clap.

The song is set to a similarly beautiful animation, created by Julie Seaward, and comes ahead of their fourth album, Total Devotion, which the pair are self-releasing next month. Check out False Aralia below:

Listen: whitefineline8 — Noah Klein

On whitefineline8, synths tick-tock against a clipped beat as Klein’s slurred vocals slip and slide their way into view, and across my mind. With a lackadaisical vocal, slack bass and layers of distortion, whitefineline8 evokes the sound of Mount Kimbie when they have collaborated with King Krule. The result is a song as overwhelming and all consuming as Mount Kimble’s wonderful Blue Train Lines.

In the closing minute, Klein wails “It’s another long night”. It hits in a tone that sounds like the midpoint between celebration and desperation. This is the music to soundtrack the moments where you aren’t quite sure if you are finding yourself, or losing yourself.

Having previously received recognition from Diffus Magazine, Rolling Stone and Musikexpress, the German-American musician is working towards the release of EP whatdidyoudo2me. Inspired by a period in Barcelona, and a dive into the Berlin music scene, the EP is written in the third person, the musician a deliberately unreliable narrator. Born out of a musical retreat, Klein invited producers Bearcubs and Aud Syn to experiment with different approaches to sound production and tape recorders, which gives the EP its distinctive sound.

Check out whitefineline8 below.

Watch: Youth — Amélie G.

Youth is a cover version of the hauntingly beautiful song by British indie folk trio Daughter. That original version is a spellbound song about the scars we inflict upon ourselves as we grow, vocalist Elena Tonra’s delivery dramatic precisely because of how restrained it is. When she sings “Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong,” Tonra does so knowing just how much weight her words carry.

In contrast, French musician Amélie G. provides a darker, more dramatic take. A lesson in acoustic atmospherics, this version of Youth is cold, brittle, and cold… It’s the late night walk through urban sprawl, dejected and alone. The glitchy electronic production and sweeping strings Amélie employs create that foreboding sense of modern loneliness with purpose. Describing the song, Amélie says:

“What I wanted to show with this song and the video, is that feeling of loneliness within a crowd or a group of people, and the difficulty of being heard. When you are with people and somehow feel invisible, inexistent.”

The sense of being on your own despite being in a crowd can be one of the most alienating sensations. There have been times when I have been in the presence of people I know, trust and love, yet still felt like I am not really there… Not really understood.

Amélie’s response to her feelings is to swallow the words of Youth like bitter little pills. They feel less like the observations of someone wryly describing their brutal emotions than in the throes of them. The track throbs with a raw energy, squeaky electronics grinding away behind clattering drums.

And it is drums where Amélie started, playing them at age six, learning jazz. But she subsequently found her passion and joined a metal band at 14. Having gone on to graduate with a degree in psychology, Amélie’s path was changed when she won a European competition for a scholarship to study at the music school of BIMM in London. She both fell in love with the city, and elevated her musical output to the professional level.

Following Amélie’s debut single last year, Cut Me Deeper, she donated Youth to the musical part of charitable organisation A Left To Stand On (ALTSO), which raises funds to provide critical and life-changing mobility treatments to children in developing countries.

Check out the Soundcloud below, and then a different take in the form of the song’s video, which include’s Amélie playing a live drum solo.