Holly Herndon
Frontier
Do you remember when you read all the press hype about Tune-Yards and you thought: “Oh that sounds like it’d be really worth checking out,” but then you listened to Tune-Yards? Well get this: Holly Herndon’s latest is like if Tune-Yards was actually good. Like a Viking wassailing song and Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Manu Chao all playing in a NutriBullet whizzed by Fever Ray, Frontier is densely digital yet hugely human, a big tune and a brilliant bit of deconstruction that never slides towards disorientation.
Banks
Gimme
Banks occupies such a unique niche in the pop ecosystem it feels as if she has to make a fresh pitch for why we need her every time she comes back. In 2019, the deck is: “Imagine an alternate universe in which Timberlake’s 2003 golden era was all sung by Lana Del Rey.” Right? Right. This is a Megalodon of pop: dark and delirious, it will take your flimsy dancehall-tinged pop and bite its tediously inconsequential face off without pause.
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Black Star Dancing
Time was when Noel would just make his indistinguishable rock songs and 6Music would playlist them. Has he lost his nerve? Because this feels as if it’s reverse-engineered to fit the playlister’s palate. The Glass Animals lope, the Cut Copy cheeky-half-a-pill buzz, the Hot Chip cutesiness, all sitting on a comfortable rock chassis. OK, you win: stick some Elbow triumphalism on top and it’s on the A list.
Logic ft Eminem
Homicide
After the general “I made all of you brats but now I’m old and haggard and I have to play by your rules so let’s have it, you bastards” try-hard air of Kamikaze, it’s good to hear Em back on his own territory. Homicide is classic Marshall Mathers-era comfort food: ie there is nothing resembling a chorus, but – as the sound of two Nadia Comănecis of flow finally going toe-to-toe, 10 syllables a second – it’s all killer.
The National
Hairpin Turns
It is now 12 years since the National last collided with a tune (2007’s Mistaken for Strangers). Can we finally admit it was an accident? The phrase “hairpin turns” makes me think of Senna ramming Prost in Japan. It does not, however, make me think of this unsalted grey tapioca. Slip in one reference to “the awesome power of your holy spirit” and Hairpin Turns would sound perfect on a 90s Christian Adult Contemporary station.
