Sorting through the week’s new singles and songs that have surfaced online over the last seven days, Jamie Skey (@jamie_skey) presents five songs you need to hear this week…
Lola Colt sound like The Doors tripping out in the desert with Ennio Morricone… and that’s why they’re currently one of London’s most exciting live band. Their soon-to-be-released debut album Away From The Water was produced by Bad Seeds legend Jim Sclavunos, who on Driving Mr Johnny injects the band’s cinematic psychedelia with a healthy dose of doom.
California-by-way-of-Brighton singer-songwriter Ed Prosek conjures sweet, simple neo-folk to swoon to. An aural ally with the likes of Damien Rice and George Ezra, the singer’s surname may sound like the word prosaic, but on Hold Tight his swooping, strummed romanticism is anything but.
Music with an agenda is hard to come by these days, but west London-based funk-punk trio We Are Z have no qualms about stridently setting out their stall. Their debut single Airbrush, a tweaking rush of irresistible wonk-pop a la Devo-meets-Vampire Weekend, attacks the vicious butchery of the plastic surgeon’s knife and its virtual equivalent, the airbrush artist, twisting and manipulating the image of perfection.
Saint Petersburg in Russia is probably more synonymous with its State Conservatory than with expansive shoegaze histrionics. But Pinkshinyultrablast, an exploratory five piece who take their lead from Slowdive, Lush and Cocteau Twins, aren’t ones for sticking to stereotypes, as they show on Umi, a complex but sumptuous confluence of mathy basslines and waves of melodic ecstasy.
Nordic synth weaver Kate Havenik follows in the same hallucinatory footsteps as Bjork, blending laptop-powered dreamscapes and traditional songcraft to beguiling effect on Emporer Of Nowhere.
