TRACK OF THE WEEK
Sparks: Hippopotamus
“There’s a painting by Hieronymus Bosch … in my pool,” Sparks plead in the week’s most relatable bit of art. You know that moment when there’s a “book by Anonymous” in your swimming pool? And “a ’58 Microbus” too? Sparks are just trying to make it through those same piscine nightmares in this crazy mixed-up world. This kicks off the Mael brothers’ first new album since 2009 – and while it’s hard to “miss” a phenomenon as eternally out of place as Sparks, it’s still good to have them back.
Rag’n’Bone Man: Skin
The latest singer to stumble from the battery farm in which new pop-soul sensations are grown, Rag’n’Bone Man is a veal pen George Ezra, a boil-in-the-bag Sam Smith – but actually half as interesting as either of those descriptions. His cod-soul basics range is the sound inside a music exec’s head made flesh – he’s a third-quarter profits spike for Sony Music Entertainment in convenient man form.
Iggy Azalea: Mo Bounce
If Iggy’s twerking in the video for Mo Bounce seems desperate (and let’s not even get on to the question of “Who is still twerking?”), that desperation isn’t without good reason. She went through one of those “scrapping an entire album” mini-meltdowns in 2015, and has been struggling to regain momentum ever since. So why has she turned to Far East Movement – they of Like a G6 fame – to produce her comeback? Thanks to them, it does that very 2010 trick of combining elephant-sized drums with a tiny mosquito riff. Perhaps she can post it back in time and it’ll be huge?
Alt-J: In Cold Blood
Any song that shares its title with a My First Cult Books List staple fills the veins with antifreeze – musicians are at their worst when they wear their light learning heavily. But while we’ve all had a giggle about the Aldi Radiohead in the past, In Cold Blood is pretty cult-worthy stuff: panicked ciphers babbled while constantly wrong-footing future spy-jazz spurts like blood up the walls.
At The Drive-In: Hostage Stamps
Now relegated to No 56 on the long list of “deeply improbable things that they said would never happen but then did”, the ATDI reunion album is dropping very soon. This taster from it brims with glassy post-hardcore menace, as Cedric Bixler-Zavala invites us to raise our “nithing pole”. For those unfamiliar with Germanic pagan traditions, a nithing pole was a long wooden stick with a recently removed horse’s head at the end. Just do as he says, he sounds serious.
