“I belong with you / you belong with me / you’re my sweetheart” went ‘Ho Hey’ by indie folk duo The Lumineers in what was one of the most infectious pop songs of the last decade. The only possible reason for having not heard it would be that you’ve been living in a cave in some remote mountain range since 2012, completely cut off from civilization. But even then, I’d have my doubts.
Very few artists specialise in the cover version as emphatically as Chan Marshall, otherwise known as Cat Power, the soulful singer songwriter whose first covers record, released in 2000, was about as perfect as a covers collection can be. That record included interpretations of tracks by artists including The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, Moby Grape and Bob Dylan, among others. It was an almost uniquely rich dive into the meaning these songs carry, and a quite stunning set of sparse musical arrangements that linger long in the memory.
Liverpool trio The Wombats are a staggeringly impressive success story. From their founding in the early noughties after meeting while studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts to the Spotify-conquering, hard-touring outfit that has shifted more than one million albums worldwide, their journey has been an incredible if curiously unrecognised one, thanks in part to their curious status as somehow the ‘uncool’ indie kids on the block.
“Just got to keep your head up / And the lights on / That’s all you can do”, coos Twin Atlantic’s lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Sam McTrusty on ‘Keep Your Head Up’, the opening track to the Scottish indie rock duo’s fifth album Transparency. It feels like the mantra we’ve all lived by over the last couple of years, and for an album that had its own troubled genesis, it’s also perhaps been something of a rallying cry for McTrusty and bassist Ross McNae, the only remaining members of the band after the departure of drummer Craig Kneale last year.
In the career of Green Day, there are many defining moments, a roll call of defining tracks, events and breakthroughs that propelled them on their way to becoming the stadium-conquering global behemoth they are today. If you were forced to narrow this list down to just a singular point though, to settle on ‘the’ Big Bang moment that transformed them forever and irreversibly from California punk upstarts to A-list stars, it would have to be the release of American Idiot in 2004. Nimrod nearly did it, Warning couldn’t, but American Idiot nailed it.
FKA twigs is back from her opus ‘Magdalene’ with the powerhouse that is ‘The Weeknd’, fresh from his own opus ‘After Hours’, with the trap banger ‘Tears in the Club’.
Lights has returned with her newest single, Real Thing, which is a fun play on slow R&B jams with a mix of 80s instrumentation.
Sometimes, a cup of coffee just isn’t enough. You need that boost of energy that caffeine just can’t achieve, which is where Bloc Party comes into play. ‘Traps’, the band’s newest single, is all the energy you need for that picker-upper.
Babe Rainbow, through the newest single, ‘Smash the Machine’, reminded the world once again of an era of music long lost but never forgotten.
Embracing R&B and Jazz roots, Areej delivers a beautiful slow-jam ‘Bloodshed’ filled with ambitious instrumentation and raw delivery.
There’s nothing quite as warm as hanging around a group of talented musicians jamming together, playing in blissful harmony. Benee encapsulates that feeling beautifully with her newest single, ‘Doesn’t Matter’.
Enveloping the listener in an esoteric aura of calm in an almost chaotic way, the seven-piece group consisting of Greg Spero, Joel Ross, Marquis Hill, Makaya McCraven, Irvin Pierce, Jeff Parker and Darryl Jones show an underappreciated portion of jazz done in a both traditional and modern style in their new single, ‘Cloud Jam’.
It’s that time of the year again, and everyone is feeling jolly. What better way to help those who need a hand in joining the others in this festive mood than with a slow Christmas song, such as ‘It’s Christmas’, by ‘Katie Garibaldi and Joseph Metcalfe.
Protest songs aren’t uncommon by any means, but a protest song against music is, well, quite daring. That’s what One Cure for Man, a musical project made by James Parkinson, very successfully did with his newest single ‘Too Many Songs’.
