All We Are – I Wear You
All We Are have supported Warpaint and Jungle and are about to tour Europe with London Grammar. A trio from Ireland, Norway and Brazil, via the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, they’ve described their music as “psychedelic boogie” and by one critic as “the Bee Gees on diazepam”. It’s a neat way of capturing their woozy pop-soul, complete with falsetto vocals. All three members sings, which partly explains the reference to the brothers Gibb – although bassist Guro Gikling is patently not a gentleman, in tight trousers or otherwise. I Wear You is their forthcoming single, released next month ahead of their self-titled debut album, which was produced by Dan Carey (Bat for Lashes, MIA, Hot Chip) and will be released in January. The album was written in a cabin in the Norwegian mountains, with followup sessions in a secluded cottage in north Wales, and it was finished in the band’s studio, in a former school in Liverpool. Not that these locations had much influence on the way it sounds, with its similarities to the streamlined pop-soul of How to Dress Well and other purveyors of laptop R&B.
2. Brogan Bentley – The Difference
Shrouded in fog and darkness, The Difference is a bruised and bleak take on R&B – or even gothic electronic-soul. It comes from the San Franciscan singer, writer and producer’s debut album, The Snake, and is out in November from Stones Throw, the label behind Madvillain, Mayer Hawthorne and the Stepkids. On The Snake, Bentley “explores snake symbology through various lenses”, which makes it sound esoteric when it is, in fact, a pleasingly diverse listen. Its various beats allude to R&B, 2-step, house, acid and even footwork. The atmosphere throughout is uniformly forbidding, and there is a sense of someone using electronic dance music to explore certain issues. David Guetta- or Calvin Harris-style party music this is not, but that doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible. The Difference is the stand-out: think Nick Cave if he decided to hook up with How to Dress Well.
3. Lara Smiles – Mind Off It
Lara Smiles is a DIY synthpop artist whose 2013 single A Million Smiles was hailed as a cross between pop masterminded by Martin Hannett and Phil Spector, and an LA-girl group with a dose of dour thrown in. Her first single, Take It Back, was like Kim Wilde’s Kids in America, with all the urgency but none of the cheerful energy. Smiles, who has worked with the producer Youth and was featured on a track by the Orb, has lots of good tunes on her SoundCloud page. You can imagine her doing a Charli XCX, and having simultaneous careers as a pop star and a songwriter-for-hire. Mind Off It is her spikiest confection to date, with hints of electro and industrial, but it doesn’t forget to pack a punchy chorus, with a guitar line that recalls Altered Images and an infectious insistence that will surely have record companies soon calling her up to write topline melodies for their artists.
4. Little May – Dust
A few weeks ago, the Playlist featured “the British Haim”, Jagaara. Now here’s Little May, the Australian Haim. The Sydney trio’s eponymous debut EP, released today, has folky and rhythmic elements, spectral harmonies and hooky tunes – what’s not to like? (You may not fancy the video to Dust, mind you; it depicts a woman grieving following the death of her dog.)
Little May’s EP provides further evidence that they’re going to get a lot of attention this season: sorrow and despair haunt the spaces of Midnight Hour, while Bones opens with the declaration, “There was this boy I fell apart to” and further showcases their haunted huskiness; Boardwalks finds them bemoaning the disappearance of a bad boy like three Lana Del Reys; and Hide is chilling with its intimations of abuse (“She screams your name as you take her to the floor”). Meet Haim noir.
5. Hyena – Mental Home
Mental Home, to be issued on 17 November by Red Venom, is the debut single by this new outfit (they used to operate as Weatherbird), who have just toured with Aussie thrashpop group DZ Deathrays and are adding to the racket created by Darlia and Drenge and other new rock bands. Hyena snagged Royal Blood producer Tom Dalgety for Mental Home, and he’s homed in on the surging dynamic (very Nirvana) and the singer’s hoarse power (very Kurt Cobain) to mesmeric effect. The single has already had 4,000 plays on Soundcloud in its first eight days. That hardly suggests a Gangnam-level phenomenon, but clearly there is an appetite for their, ahem, sonic destruction. Mental Home might not be reinventing the wheel – it addresses the provisional nature of “normality” – but listening to it, tired, on a miserable Monday morning is as bracing as a cold shower.
