Previewed in the Paris Catacombs, Queens of the Stone Age’s first single in three years, ‘Easy Street’ is something other than their more familiar kind of song, might conceivably even have come from another band entirely. Funny, breezy, apparently off the cuff, and effortless sounding. Terrific video, too.
Motoric riff? Check. Icy synths? Box ticked. Gothically overwrought lyrics? “5am, teeth-marked skin, I can see out loud.” Done. Essentially, then, this is Interpol keeping on doing what they do so very well. More of the same highly likely on next month’s The Mirror Weighs a Ton album.
Also continuing to reliably plough his own furrow on this taster for his fifth solo album, due 28th August, My Morning Jacket figurehead James here pilots a bubbling psych-rock groove through astral synths, celestial harmonies, and his own resonating guitar lines. Result, a heady trip.
Composed for indie rock physicist Brian Cox’s Emergence touring show, and upon which Harvey casts herself as the voice of NASA’s Voyager 2 probe, but of course, this is aptly spacey and grand, sweeping synths and a full orchestra sending Harvey off to another bold new frontier.
Full disclosure, I was tipped to Dina Ogon by none other than Greg Dulli. Very happily, too. This epically appointed retro-pop set piece is one of multiple highlights from the Stockholm collective’s current, excellent Manniskobarn album. Music to make your heart sing.
Lead-off track for the forthcoming Lost Weekend album, six years on from Phoebe Bridgers’ last, Punisher, ‘Lost Boys’ is at once familiar, the nonchalance of her vocal, its folksy pop-ness, and then again, a step up and forwards with how it gathers up at, “This machine is killing me,” and from there propels into its widescreen chorus.
Speaking of Greg Dulli, here he is with the third track advancing The Whigs’ imminent Self Control album. ‘Jungle Roux’ assembles like storm clouds, ominous, looming, dark at heart, mighty to behold. “There’s a quiet confidence that comes with being able to back it up,” Dulli says of his present state of mind. This is the proof in the pudding.
Beautifully sung, exquisitely rendered, and which is to say, standard issue for the stellar talent that is Basia Bulat. Reworked acoustically here from her last album, Basia’s Palace, and as per the other repurposed tracks on her new EP, Bouquet.
More gracefully poised, strings-sweetened country-folk, this is the closing track from Willow Avalon’s just-released, frequently excellent second album, Pink Pocket Pistol, among the best of the year so far.
Highlight of Margo Price’s digitally released, wholly entrancing collection of protest songs, Days of Unrest. Woody Guthrie’s tribute to 28 Mexican migrant workers killed in a 1948 plane crash at Los Gatos Canyon, California, flavoured by the Memphis Mariachi, and duetted with Baez, who performed the same song with Bob Dylan back on the Rolling Thunder Review tour. Timelessly wonderous.
Combining Walsall-based bluesman John J. Presley, Blur/Depeche Mode producer Ben Hillier, and broadcaster/orchestrator Danielle Perry, Shadowman stir a Nick Cave-esque soup of woozy guitar, erupting electronics, and late-night mood to transfixing effect. Their self-titled first album together is out in September.
Recorded in her Portland home backyard studio with Veirs playing almost all of the instruments herself, her niece’s bass and step kids’ drums included, a freewheeling trumpet apart, ‘Pulse’ has a propulsive undertow to its typical stately folk-pop mounting.
Yorn may never again replicate the breakout success of his 2001 debut album Musicforthemorningafter, but he goes on making high-flying music. This is the latest example, a steady-cruise, bittersweet hymn to fatherhood, and a taster for his 11th solo album, All the Beauty, out 24th July.
The Suicide Handbook was the album Adams meant as the follow-up to 2000’s Heartbreaker, his still-unmatched solo debut, but shelved for Gold. Long circulated as a bootleg, he’s finally put it out now. Altogether, and as the acoustic, keening ‘Cracks in the Photograph’ showcases, it reminds, apart from everything else, that he’s a profoundly, considerably gifted songwriter.
Upon which, and contrary to all of my expectations, the Stranger Things actor makes a more than decent fist of fan worshipping Paul Westerberg, specifically in his late-period Replacements mode. Taken from Wolfhard’s second album in under a year, Fire From the Hip.
At last, U2 rediscover how to be U2. With Larry Mullen back at the drums, ‘Street of Dreams’ locates the sweet spot between, well, ‘The Sweetest Thing’ and ‘Beautiful Day’, all at once meaning it’s joyful, euphoric, has Edge doing Edge-type things, and could be absolutely no-one else.
Crain has toured in good company with the Avett Brothers, Neutral Milk Hotel, Brandi Carlisle, and First Aid Kit, with whom she cut this, a song she wrote in 20 minutes, targeting a Neil Young-meets-Emmylou Harris vibe and hitting the bullseye.
Philly duo Victoria Rose and Shane Filipczak swoon and stride through a 6:39 dream-psych-pop landscape, filigrees of acoustic guitar turning to something more urgent and bracing. Suggestive of their October-due second album being quite something.
Kahan remains a hit or miss singer-songwriter. Engaging, or else beige. ‘American Cars’, actually released back in April and the standout from his fourth album, The Great Divide, is his better side, a driving-with-the-top-down soundtrack for the rest of the summer.
Closing track on White’s new, seventh, and self-produced solo album, Frozen Charlotte, ‘Neighbors Blues’ does exactly what you’d expect by now, squealing, stomping, and skronking, and is just fine because of it.
Now sample the whole of July’s essential songs at the link:
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