Every week a plethora of big name acts, Australian musicians and little-known musos drop brand spankin’ new tracks on the internet. We’ve trawled through the internet to find some of our favourites and plucked them from the masses.
This week we got new tunes from Bertie Blackman, another taste of Jack White’s new album, as well as Jurassic 5’s first new cut in nearly a decade. There’s also awesome local produce from a Big Scary-aided songstress, tasty glitch-hop from Milwaukee Banks, plus another taste of ex-Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser’s solo debut and an LA band who channel Brooklyn sounds. Grab your headphones and enjoy.
Bertie Blackman – ‘Run For Your Life’
We haven’t heard from this experimental singer-songwriter since Pope Innocent X was released in 2012 with a complex and off beat style of pop making for one of Blackman’s most challenging releases yet. ‘Run For Your Life’ marks a return to a far simpler and smoother pop template. Its heavily electronic touch begins as a foreboding beat before making way for a euphoric chorus. This might just be one of Blackman’s most accessible singles of her career so far. It will feature on an as-of-yet unannounced record due for release later this year. (CT)
Jurassic 5 – ‘The Way We Do It’
Though it features a posthumous production job from Heavy D (who passed away in 2011), the most distinctive hook of Jurassic 5’s first new track in 8 years is the familiar sample it gravitates around – The White Stripes ‘My Bell’ from 2005′s Get Behind Me Satan.
Centered around Meg’s snappy drums and Jack’s ivory and vocal riffs, ‘The Way We Do It’ is an old-school hip hop joint in the way you remember J5 doing them on previous hits like ‘What’s Golden’ and ‘Quality Control’. The mic-hopping verses give each MC – Chali 2NA, Akil, Zaakir, Mark 7, and Soup – a turn in the spotlight, along with flourishes from DJs Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark. (AN)
NO – ‘Leave The Door Open’
Imagine if The National and Interpol, two of New York’s indie finest, had a love child. Well there’s no need to, because it already exists and it’s band by the Google-proof name, NO. The six-piece’s New Zealand-born frontman Bradley Hanan Carter closely recalls The National’s Matt Berninger with his gloomy lyrical worldview and gloomier vocal delivery, but unlike the East Coast band they so closely recall, NO hail from sunny LA.
If you can overcome the similarities, ‘Leave The Door Wide Open’ is an imperious introduction to the band and their debut album El Prado (out 4th July via Create/Control/Arts & Crafts), complete with an intriguingly surreal music video starring hooded barflys. (AN)
Airling – ‘The Runner’
Airling, the musical non de plume of Brisbane’s Hannah Shepherd, first came to our attention via her ace debut single ‘Ourobouros‘ and her slinky sophomore single is just as killer.
Starting with a windblown field recording of a vocal melody, the track soon blossoms amidst Shepherd’s tactfully precious singing, pillowed by cut n paste drum loops, warm, rippling synth washes, and heavily treated vocal effects – all used in a painterly production job again courtesy of Big Scary’s Tom Iansek. This slice of woozy yet confident neo-pop has us keeping an ear out for Airling’s debut EP due later in the year. (AN)
Hamilton Leithauser – ‘I Retired’
When The Walkmen split at the end of 2013 (or as their bassist Peter Bauer describes as an “extreme hiatus”) it was bad news for Aussie fans more so than their American or European counterparts. The band failed to visit our shores after the release of the brilliant Heaven in 2012 with their last visit coming via Harvest in 2011. Lead singer Hamilton Leithauser’s solo debut, Black Hours, should take some of the edge off that pain though. The record isn’t too far from that of The Walkmen, except from its comparatively downbeat nature. ‘I Retired’ though, which features Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij on producer duties and a host of instruments, is far from that of his old band with country influences and doo-waps pervading throughout. (CT)
Jack White – ‘Just One Drink’
We’ve already had two quenching shots of Lazaretto, Jack White’s new solo LP – the blustering instrumental ‘High Ball Stepper’ and funk-abilly punch of the title track – now comes ‘Just One Drink’.
A more straight-ahead blues rock number, it finds White boasting “you drink water / I drink gasoline” against a chugging backing of fashionably unruffled guitars, fuelled by some rather tasty fiddle work. It sounds a little like 70s era Rolling Stones and a lot like Lazaretto is shaping up to be every bit the genre-spanning rock record we’d hoped it would be. (AN)
Milwaukee Banks – ‘Rose Water’
One of Melbourne’s most exciting duos Milwaukee Banks have just dropped ‘Rose Water’ the follow up to their acclaimed 2013 single ‘Pluto Bounce’.
Working with rapper Dyl Thomas ( Polo Club) and producer Adrian “Edo” Rafter (a.k.a Flight Tonight), the Banks duo have created a dreamy blend of glitchy electronica, smooth beats and unprecedented level of class. (LD)
Tooms – ‘Pray’
Tooms is the brand-spanking new solo project of Melbourne man about town Sam Gill (perhaps better known as part of dance-floor killers, Nayser & Gilsun).
‘Pray’ is the pinnacle from the producer’s debut solo EP, Simple Tactics. The dreamy track is introduced with the repetition of angelic whispers as it slowly progresses with very subtle bass tones, eventually becoming engulfed by cloud-like synthesisers. (JH)
