The Hotrats
Milkshake
In lockdown, where Pringles dipped in peanut butter is an acceptable breakfast, it’s hard to know what we actually need. Do we really need a Kelis cover from Gaz and Danny from Supergrass? Is it actually a chunky, wonky, thigh-slappy hoot, or is it like slamming through a pack of Tunnock’s before Bargain Hunt – ie, It’s Just Something To Do? Difficult to say. I think it’s magnificent. But then again, I haven’t left my flat for three weeks and just ate a whole a jar of jalapeños.
Chai
No More Cake
Cabin fever or not, this box-of-frogs whopper from artsy Japanese four-piece Chai absolutely bangs. “Look at you, that’s way too much / Your face is made up like a cake!” they wail in prissy unison, over what sounds for all the world like Björk’s Army of Me and Nine Inch Nails’s Closer nipple-twisting each other to death at a sexy party. The cake is a metaphor for makeup. Of course it is.
PartyNextDoor ft Rihanna
Believe It
Where has Rihanna been? Not a peep from her for three years, then out of nowhere she sticks her head above the parapet to wibble five words on this not wholly unpleasant yet instantly forgettable conjugal jam, before she’s off again, disparu. Lovely to hear her dulcets, but for the Ri-Public this’ll be like a nicotine patch, or screaming into a pillow because you want to go outside: it’ll take the edge off, but not for long.
Jess Williamson
Infinite Scroll
“Time did unfold like an infinite scroll” seems prescient at the moment, but rather than watching all three Lord of the Rings films while you languish in the Ocado queue, Austin tunester Williamson is deconstructing society’s addiction to social media, making its languid desert-pop genuinely heartbreaking.
Kings of Leon
Going Nowhere
Few phrases these days conjure as little excitement as “there’s a new Kings of Leon song”. And this is basically Oasis’s Songbird, only with all that song’s affable, doofus charm sucked out, so it sort of just plods hither and thither like a dying dog. Young people: KoL used to be good, honest. This, though, is toilet.
