Listen: Best Kind Of Lost — Joshua Idehen

Following on last year’s gospel-tinged [Don’t You Give Up On Me], long-time BlackPlastic fav Joshua Idehen has unveiled new single Best Kind Of Lost.

Taken from Idehen’s forthcoming mixtape, Learn To Swim, Best Kind Of Lost sees Joshua deliver laid-back vocals that ride skippy beats and a warm, looping melodic refrain. The result has a hazy, easy-going feeling the befits the song’s inspiration:

“This song's about a really nice day I spent with my partner that ended with us running from the police cuz we were a little too happy at an illegal forest rave. I sort of challenged myself to write something about a day I was happy, no twist, no negative, and this was the answer.”

I love the sense of joy here on Best Kind Of Lost, and how Idehen has created a song free of anxiety that is unmistakably the product of contemporary multi-cultral Britain.

Check out Best Kind Of Lost below, and look out for the mixtape, Learn To Swim, out 21 April.

Listen: Young And Freewheeling — Sylvan Weekends

Sylvan Weekends’ single Young And Freewheeling hums with a kind of excited, youthful energy. It’s the feeling of late sunny summer evenings spent on a bike, discovering the world and marvelling at the sheer possibility as you begin to grow up.

It’s that youthful abandon Sylvan Weekends have attempted to capture here. In their own words:

“It’s a trip down memory lane, an invitation to remember the joy of pelting down the road full tilt, in a world before adult worries became real. It’s an invitation to return to that carefree way of being.”

Sylvan Weekends are a trio of musicians, each with a distinct background. Matthew plays folk, Freya instrumental-electro and Danial rock. Together, they create a hard-to-pin-down sound, but co-writers Matthew and Freya bring together their vocal harmonies to give the music the nostalgic sound at play here.

The aesthetic of Young And Freewheeling, a kind of electronic folksiness, reminds me of the likes of early Arcade Fire, and I’m From Barcelona. There is an apparent joy at the act of play itself. Vocal harmonies that weave in and out of one another, moments where the band seemingly try to out do one another in an attempt to play as quietly as possible. The music becomes what it embodies — a tribute to childhood that is child-like in its sound.

Young And Freewheeling is a beautiful depiction of innocence and possibility, yet in actuality the feeling it depicts seems almost tragically constrained by the need to grow, and grow older. The freedom is itself what leads to choices and consequence.

Listen: Me Plus You — Madam Bandit

Following on from Madam Bandit’s previous songs, including Lie To Me, which I featured back in October, comes Me Plus You. Timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day, Me Plus You is every bit as besotted as Lie To Me, but it depicts a relationship at a much earlier phase, and through an altogether more hopeful lens.

Where Lie To Me was a song filled with a desperate need for a suspension of disbelief, Me Plus You is about the experience of discovering someone who helps you discover yourself. With playful lyrics that talk to rocket science, calculations, and pi, the song feels like someone marvelling at the weird-yet-universal experience that it is to fall in love. It happens to us individuals in a way that is uniquely personal, and yet almost everyone experiences it. Science and chemistry and (just maybe) a touch of magic come together to create this incredible feeling.

Madam Bandit’s vocals teeter on the edge of naïveté, and yet the abject infatuation makes them irresistible all the same. The musical production applied to Me Plus You only adds to the feeling of drama, with warm chords, snappy drums and harp-like synth melodies. It all comes together to create the perfect soundtrack to giving into your more romantic side, and losing yourself in the thoughts of that special someone.

Watch: The Book Of Love — Alex Winston

Image credit Ellyn Jameson

One of my all-time favourite albums is The Magnetic Fields’ gloriously off-the-wall 69 Love Songs. Initially conceptualised as a musical revue, Stephin Merritt’s album is a delightfully eccentric exploration and deconstruction of the concept of love songs. Comprised of three separate discs, it is almost three hours long and takes in a variety of genres and moods and, frankly, if you haven’t ever heard it you should stop reading and go rectify that.

Regardless, the original version of The Book Of Love is one of the better known songs from 69 Love Songs, and has invited numerous covers. Where Merritt’s version is delivered in a somewhat deadpan-if-heartfelt way, Alex Winston’s take is more overtly emotive, particularly when paired with a video the evokes the notion of love’s long-lasting impact, both within our lives and beyond them. Winston’s vocal here soars, overdubbed harmonies creating a wall of melody whilst guitars create a slow building crescendo.

This version of The Book Of Love is taken from Alex Winston’s EP of of love related covers. Including versions of songs by Charli XCX, Daniel Johnston, and Field Medic, Other People’s Love Songs is out now (and just in time for Valentine’s day!). Check out the cover of the Magnetic Fields below:

Listen: Better Be Yours — GRO

Danish musician and producer GRO has just unveiled the single Better Be Yours, a song centred around the complexity of relationships. The song is the title track from a whole album created by GRO, real-name Julie Gro Møller Christiansen, written together with her ex-boyfriend Mads Kinnerup during the period following their break-up.

With a surprising degree of stoicism, Better Be Yours is an optimistic if realistic portrayal of romantic relationships, as the artist explains:

”Better Be Yours is about daring to believe in love, even if it has been beaten up many times and you have been hurt. It is completely natural to have periods when things are not going well in a relationship, and you need a little pep talk to keep the spirit up, so our intention was to make an energetic rave track that invites the listener to keep the courage and patience when things are not working optimally.”

The song itself is a crisp slice of acid pop, wet synths giving emphasis to a clean vocal performance and snappy, minimal drum kicks. GRO’s vocal is deployed in an almost instrument-like fashion – snippets of messages deployed as reassurance to a past, present or future lover, avoiding anything that feels like a formulaic verse-like structure. It makes the slide into Better Be Yours' chorus all the more notable, with a repeated refrain of the song’s title providing the clarity and space that allows some extended instrumental vamping. In particular, the extended chorus and bridge structure that kicks off the song’s second half is an absolute joy. There is a distinct late-90s atmosphere to GRO’s production aesthetic, but it feels fresh here, in part due to its complete embrace of modernism.