L-Fresh the Lion ft Moza and Mirrah – Mother
For fans of: The Love Below, De La Soul, Jurassic Five
Elton John’s favourite Aussie hip-hop artist, L-Fresh the Lion, dropped this soulful, sungazing jam in the final few days of the worst Australian summer in history, with bushfires and flash flooding turning anxiety and anger into the national state of being. This environmentally-charged song calls for solutions not excuses, and comes from a place of “frustration and impatience”, according to L-Fresh. Despite the uncanny timing, Mother was actually written three years previously, for a TED-X performance. Electronic duo Moza produced the spritely ’90s-leaning track, while frequent collaborator Mirrah provides sunny backing vocals. With a conscious message and a carefree sound, Mother recalls the golden age of hip-hop, back when messages of peace and activism briefly outshone the lore of gang violence and living large.
For more: Check out his 2019 singles Alchemy and Born to Stand Out.
Alex Lahey – Sucker for Punishment
For fans of: PJ Harvey, Queens of the Stone Age, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
It’s only been 10 months since Alex Lahey released her assured second record The Best of Luck Club, and she’s already offering up the first taste of her next album. The slight flashes of glam rock in her 2019 music are pushed even further, brought shimmering to the surface. The results are less Bolan and Bowie, more Brian Molko and Karen O – smeared lipstick, sharp riffs, fuzz pedals, and stoned basslines. An extremely unreliable narrator offers up misguided realisations, with distorted vocals disguising the message further, until it’s hard to tell what she believes and what she truly wishes to believe. If this gem is any indication, it looks like Lahey will be going widescreen on her not-so-difficult third album.
For more: Lahey is touring solo this April as support act for City and Colour.
Snowy Band – Love You to Death
For fans of: Augie March, Antony and the Johnsons, Badly Drawn Boy
Liam Halliwell plays seasonal pop in The Ocean Party and records lysergic madness in Cool Sounds. In Snowy Band, his latest musical offering, he slows the pace, takes the lead, and ups the emotional stakes. Love You to Death is heavy-lidded and half-forgotten, a slight, fragile breeze that enters the room. This is the aural equivalent of the slow TV movement, a perfect song for a society rocked to sleep by the Calm app – yet, somehow, it doesn’t at all operate in the same field as the scores of Eno-influenced ambient acts. The music is sonically sharp, not purposefully hazy, the melodies are delicate but well-defined. Still, this song feels like smoke you can’t grab ahold of. The only constant is a stammering drumbeat that offers a hypnotic anchor as Halliwell’s voice slowly seeps into your consciousness in earworms that bury deep and reveal themselves after multiple listens.
For more: Snowy Band’s debut album Audio Commentary is out 27 March.
Paul Kelly – Sleep, Australia, Sleep
For fans of: Bob Dylan, Archie Roach, The Waifs
Just as Australians are waking up and taking action against climate change, Paul Kelly has released a gentle lullaby for a nation of citizens that often prefers to close their eyes. Kelly refers to Sleep, Australia, Sleep as “a lament in the form of a lullaby”, but the song’s urgency far outstrips its narcoleptic qualities, despite sounding like a waltzing bush ballad you’d learn in primary school, forget by university, and never care to examine the origin of. Kelly presents his rage through a gentle sarcasm so lightly peppered that drive-by listeners won’t know to look for it. Helikens our environmental indifference to the archetypal frog in a saucepan: . By the time Kelly is serenely singing about rising seas, firestorms and cyclones, and of mounting corpses, you are sure to have been lulled into a nightmare state. Kelly has an unassailable catalogue of classics: a few dozen FM staples, film soundtracks, concept albums and the greatest Australian Christmas carol since we straya-fied Jingle Bells. It’s a lot to keep up with, but make sure you don’t sleep on this important addition to his canon.
For more: Kelly and Paul Grabowsky will perform their new record, Please Leave Your Light On at Melbourne Recital Centre on 26 May and Sydney’s City Recital Hall on 30 May.
Methyl Ethel – Majestic AF
For fans of: Pulp, Radiohead, Caribou
There’s a thin line between dystopia and the dancefloor, and a lot of the most interesting electronica – New Order, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, most of the Warp catalogue – blends nostalgia with technology; club beats with the downbeat. Methyl Ethel’s latest songs have an increasing hypnagogic feel to them, which may be a result of the recent focal shift from an incendiary live five-piece to what is now largely a solo outlet for producer, singer and mainstay Jake Webb. It’s no small boast to name such an insular-sounding single Majestic AF, but Methyl Ethel somehow earns this title with an epic feat of creepy falsetto, snake-charmer synths, and a drumbeat that will challenge your equilibrium. Webb’s voice is blessed with a charming warmth, which makes his push against the fractured, cold production of his backing track all the more disorientating.
For more: Methyl Ethel’s EP Hurts to Laugh is out 10 April. He starts a solo Australian tour in Brisbane on 15 April, at The Outpost.
Elsy Wameyo – Pastor
For fans of: Lauryn Hill, Natasha Bedingfield, Erykah Badu
Towards the end of last year, Kenyan-born Elsy Wameyo released the stunning Outcast, a soul-drenched slow jam which was picked up by Triple J but really should have crossed straight over to smoothfm. This latest single is just as stunning, but far more upbeat and frenetic, with a hook that lands somewhere between a schoolyard chant and a gospel choir, and a skipping rope beat that jerks over jaunty piano stabs like a Jackson 5 cut. Wameyo is a truly gifted vocalist, and fittingly, the last half-minute of this single is a vocal showcase akin to a religious experience, as Wameyo goes after the high notes with gusto, provides her own harmonies, gang vocals and interjections, and offers up many different sonic paths that she could travel down in the future.
For more: Wameyo plays various events throughout March and April, including Brunswick Music Festival on 17 March, Adelaide U Ball with Montaigne on 21 March, and Sounds of Adelaide on 5 April.
Violent Soho – Lying on the Floor
For fans of: Superchunk, Veruca Salt, Dinosaur Jr
The first two singles we heard from Violent Soho’s forthcoming fifth album made a strong case for mediocrity. Not musically, mind – they were both impressive showcases of their strongest go-to sounds: the soft/loud grunge of Nirvana and The Pixies, and a Range Life-meets-Neil Young twang that skates by slowly, stoned and smiling. Lyrically, however, both songs pleaded for an easy respite from existential aches. New single Lying on the Floor continues this timely theme, with vocalist Luke Boerdam combating the weight of the world by simply lying on the floor. You Am I producer Greg Wales helmed this recording, and his bright, guitar-heavy production suits the band’s Livid-era sensibilities to a tee. The result is perhaps the most “perfect” sounding Violent Soho single to date, in which all the musical parts sit together well, the riff sounds like vintage J Mascis, and everything in Mansfield remains A-OK.
For more: Violent Soho’s fifth album Everything Is A-OK will be out on 3 April.
The Smith Street Band – Big Smoke
For fans of: Saddle Creek, Bruce Springsteen, The Gaslight Anthem
Wil Wagner built his band for stadiums, back porches, and punk clubs alike. He also built it, for better or worse, completely around his own persona as a singer-songwriter: his yearning strine, his smart syllables, sweat and sentiments peppered like shotgun shells across four albums, a handful of EPs, and a few standalone singles. The better of two Smith Street songs released last August was named Chips & Gravy but sated waiting fans like a five-course feast; a rousing, urgent ode that could have slotted comfortably on the last Killers album (perhaps after a title change). Big Smoke is a similarly-sized tune, with Wagner aiming for Springsteen territory. Figuratively speaking, he lands square in Jersey on a last-chance power drive. This isn’t their first attempt at a Bruce-sized sound – the band’s name is a take on the E-Street Band after all – but it’s by far their most successful.
For more: The Smith Street Band are touring Australia this month. Their fifth album Don’t Waste Your Anger will be out later this year.
Odette ft Hermitude – Feverbreak
For fans of: Kanye West, Kate Bush, Portishead
It’s a mighty power move from Odette to start a single with a minute-long spoken word section, waves of dexterous poetry tumbling over a stabbing, scatting piano part with no expectations of listeners keeping up. Production team and hip-hop maestros Hermitude provide a suitably avant garde bedding that lands somewhere between a trip hop deep cut and a James Blake interlude. A “chaotic, electronic world that I was free to scream in”, as Odette called it in a press release. After three hypnotic minutes, a fever breaks, and layers of vocals and splashy drums suddenly interplay. It’s a well-earned pay-off. This is truly experimental pop, luckily released during one of those rare eras when songs as oddly crafted as this can actually break through to the mainstream.
For more: Odette performs at Womad on 7 March and on 9 March and will tour the East Coast in April and May.
The Flowers – Summer Saviour
For fans of: The Clouds, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Sundays
Fanatics of Bristol-based indie label Sarah Records will absolutely adore the sugary, sun-kissed rush of Summer Saviour, a twee blast of power pop that by all rights, should be soundtracking new teenage love affairs across the country. That would have been this song’s fate had it come out 25 years ago, sitting alongside The Mavis’s, Pollyanna, and Frente on the Summer Bay jukebox, the band driving a Barina from festival to festival, soundtracking cartwheel-infused picnics with portable CD players. Sure, this Kodak-exposed world is no longer the one we live in, but such unbridled sonic joy should still manage to find an audience in 2020, even if people have to work harder to discover it.
For more: Listen to their other singles Truly Madly Sleepy and Origami.
