Music

Tracks of the week reviewed: Thom Yorke, the 1975, Bat for Lashes


Sturgill Simpson
Sing Along

Sturgill Simpson, yeah? The country and western guy who covers Nirvana and makes it sound as smooth as a spoonful of honey in a big fat glass of Kentucky whiskey, yeah? Well, yeah … except that he’s suddenly binned his Stetson and is instead summoning the giddy Friday night spirits of Black Keys and Josh Homme to make a filthy, squelchy dive bar rocker. Now that the whole world’s gone yeehaw crazy, ditching the rodeo-fresh outlaw sound feels like a pretty bold move.

Bat for Lashes
Jasmine

Natasha Khan’s new album Lost Girls is partly inspired by 1980s vampire B-movie The Lost Boys, so it should come as no surprise that Jasmine sounds a bit like you’re trapped inside a vintage Atari console while Helena Bonham Carter reads out some Anne Rice short stories in a spooky voice. It’s also got some pretty wild synths, ones that sound as if they’re being played by Ross from Friends. And no, I don’t mean the Flying Lotus-endorsed electronic dude, I mean the dinosaur guy.

Declan McKenna
British Bombs

I want to like this Declan McKenna track, really I do. I want to like it because it lays into the awfulness that is the UK arms trade. I want to like it because decent protest songs are thin on the ground. I want to like it because Declan has a nice velvet blazer in his promo photo, which looks a lot like the one I used to wear when I was 15. But I can’t, because it sounds like the Fratellis.

The 1975
People

Who would have thought that in 2019 one of the biggest bands in the world would be aping a 2002 single by shouty Welsh hardcore-ish punks Mclusky called, rather memorably, Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues. It’s a bit of change from their last song, which featured teen hero Greta Thunberg reading an essay about climate change, but it’ll definitely get them that opening set at Camden’s Dublin Castle.

Thom Yorke
Daily Battles

It’s nice to imagine that when Thom Yorke is at home he eats only jelly and ice-cream, and does endless backflips on the massive bouncy castle in his back garden. And then, when he gets a commission to write a song for a movie – such as this one from Ed Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn – he sighs, wipes the Tango off his chin and conjures up the spirit of Sad Thom, a guy he left behind at some point in 1997 but now feels obliged to embody four times a year in order to pay the bouncy castle bills.



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