Outfit
This week’s Singles Club sees Getintothis’ Chris Burgess get to grips with adult magic tricks, moody drivers and the unlikely return of Daphne & Celeste!
Outfit: New Air – Single of the Week
With their new album Slowness due out mid June, along with a homecoming Kazimier date set for June 18, Outfit have also shared this brand new song and video.
New Air is a spacious track that rises and falls, shimmering along as it goes.
Andrew PM Hunt’s superb vocals are set to choppy synths, and drifting piano lines, the song building to a fantastic peak.
Daphne & Celeste: You And I Alone
In one of the least-expected comebacks of all time, the late 90s pop sensations Daphne & Celeste have returned!
You And I Alone, produced by the experimental pop auteur Max Tundra, is a much more classy affair than the duo’s previous output, some 15 years ago, although they don’t look to have aged at all.
Don’t remember them? Check out the video of the pair getting bottled off at the 2000 Reading Festival – one of the ballsiest performances of all time, putting most rock bands to shame.
Major Lazer & DJ Snake: Lean On
Diplo and co’s dancehall-inflected adventures march steadily on, with the announcement of a new Major Lazer album and, bizarrely, a new cartoon series of FXX.
The album Peace is the Mission drops in June, and new track Lean On very nearly acheived Single of the Week status.
A collaboration with DJ Snake (of Turn Down For What production fame), Lean On bounces and flows gloriously, with Major Lazer’s sharp beats provided an ideal foil to Danish singer MØ’s supremely feline vocals.
The video, filmed in India, is pure Bollywood lusciousness too.
Herbert: Battle
Electronic music pioneer Matthew Herbert has shared a second track from his upcoming album The Shakes, his first dance record in nine years.
Battle is a slow-burning, atmospheric track that builds nicely from ambient whirrs to a strongly-sung peak, before falling away magnificently.
The video shows Herbert sitting in his car looking moody. It shouldn’t be any good at all, but somehow matches the song’s ennui perfectly.
FKA twigs: Glass & Patron
The experimental trip-hopper FKA twigs has directed and choreographed the video to her new single Glass & Patron, which features a rather adult take on the magician’s scarf trick.
Both video and song are a rather patchy affair though, almost suffocating in their pretentiousness and whacked-out minimal instrumentation.
Maybe it’s groundbreaking, maybe not. Maybe I’m just too old to tell these days.
James Wolf: Deeper
His songs pitched somewhere between house and pop, James Wolf is an interesting songwriter. The Dubliner’s new track Deeper is a deceptively soulful and sophisticated piece of chilled nu-disco.
It’s undeniably a fun, uplifting song and Wolf’s vocals are impossibly smooth and effortless.
Spectral Chorus: Old House
Recently signed to Skeleton Key Records, the St Helens trio Spectral Chorus recorded this track in a dilapidated house in The Pyrenees.
The isolated atmosphere seems to have been well and truly captured, as Old House is a truly eerie and mesmerising tune, with Fran Baxter, Martin Baxter and Ewan Johnson delivering some prize harmonies.
Inventions: Peregrine
Inventions – Matthew Cooper from Eluvium‘s project with Explosions In The Sky’s Mark T Smith – is a sort of experimental-instrumental supergroup.
The duo use a wide array of instruments, samples, found sounds and more to produce works such as Peregrine, taken from their new album Maze of Woods – their second in under a year of working together.
Peregrine is exactly what you’d expect from them, a wide, cinematic and dreamlike tune that proves music is sometimes about the journey, not the destination.
The video is by far the creepiest featured in Singles Club for a long while (discounting Nickelback).
Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Multi-Love
Soon to be released on Jagjaguwar, Multi-Love is a thoroughly charming record from the American/Kiwi psych band, showcasing singer Ruban Nielson’s versatile and airy vocals.
Multi-Love is the title track from their new, third album and suggests a little more in terms of production from their earlier output.
Superheaven: I’ve Been Bored
American rockers Superheaven – once touted by Alternative Press as one of the up-and-coming bands to watch, never really set the world on fire following their debut album, 2013’s Jar.
However, they’ve returned with a new album Ours Is Chrome, and this pleasingly grungy new tune. I’ve Been Bored is lovely mess of overdriven guitars and simple chord progressions, a sound that now strangely seems rather nostalgic.
Bushwaka: Loco Loco Loco
Horrible autotune? Check
Terrible Spanish rapping? Check
Sickeningly cheap beats? Check
However, this song may actually be brilliant. I defy you not to start singing along to the chorus as fast as you can. It truly is loco en el coco, it’s just big dumb fun and I kinda love it.
Ed Sheeran & Rudimental: Bloodstream
Because every generation gets the Mick Hucknall they deserve.
