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…
New kid on the electronic block, Luka, hasn’t even released his debut EP yet, nevertheless his wildly popular Inside The Nest tumblr page has already inveigled 150,000 followers. The 23-year-old producer looks set to win over yet more devotees with his forthcoming EP The Nest, out 14 July, a soulful first taste of which can be sampled via Quiet Eyes, featuring Belgian singer-songwriter Love Like Birds, which smacks of a chirpier James Blake.
Seattle-based songwriting veteran Damien Jurado bagged a host of glowing reviews for his excellent eleventh album Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son, an ethereal mixture of folk and white soul along the lines of Matthew E White, but with the ragged edges smoothed over. Metallic Cloud was one of the album’s most striking tracks, a lush, graceful puff of echo-laden melancholia that glides down similarly lonely sonic highways as Mercury Rev.
The members of Norway’s Beezewax grew up together, discovering all that life has to offer through girls, fights, skateboarding and music, especially The Cure, Lemonheads and Husker Du. And with their latest track Everyone Will Tear You Down the jangle-rock quartet seem to have discovered the secret to eternal youth, with its wistful, innocent-sounding melodies and invigorating, the Cure-like guitar spanks.
Sweatily thunderous gigs are one of lo-fi garage punks White Reaper’s recognised trademarks, and the raucous trio have managed to capture some of that pore-overflowing riffola on Conspirator, cut loose from their forthcoming, self-titled debut EP, out 24 June.
Back in 2012, aided by ambient-techno multi-instrumentalist Jon Hopkins, King Creosote – real name Kenny Anderson – released an album of stripped-back, uncharacteristically intense beauty with Diamond Mine, which rightfully garnered a Mercury nomination. With his latest offering For One Night Only, taken from his forthcoming album, From Scotland With Love, Creosote seems to back to his breezy, buoyant self, owing to its curtain-lifting strings, heart-expanding melodies and toe-tapping tempo.
