Pertini
There’s melancholy at its most beautiful, the future of pop, revivalism done right and a titanic stomp of blues in this week’s playlist of the very finest new music from Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke.
The much-needed neo-funk brace of Jodie Abacus‘ first two tracks should by now have set the South Londoner apart as the spearhead of the future of pop, and as the first of said singles I’ll Be That Friend racked up hundreds of thousands of Soundcloud plays and topped the Hype Machine charts every ounce of his success felt entirely deserved.
What’s perhaps most remarkable about his second and latest single, Good Feeling, is that it’s even better than that garden-fresh first. Crisp, groovy Prince-esque pop ramped up to a beaming dance by slingshots of Thundercat bass, an assertive vocal almost downplays itself in its unruffled, absolute cool.
Elsewhere, London pairing Pertini unravel ounces of understated eminence in a layered hypnosis of transfixing, heartbreaking melancholy on new single Blackfriar’s Bridge. Beginning in a drift of solo-Albarn-ish London sorrow, bumps of bass, withdrawing synths and self-affacing mini-eruptions of leaping vocal intermingle into a piece both claustrophobic and completely beautiful.
The accompanying video, directed by Marko Anstice, winner of the SXSW Film Award, is the perfect compliment to what the duo call a rumination on the evils of “apathy and laziness”, an unending surrealist loop of the maddening despair of modernity, though painted with the same juxtaposition of exquisite hues that sets the single apart as one of the year’s most very touching.
Dark Around the Eyes/Wish You Were Orange, meanwhile, the latest double A-side from Oxford foursome Orange Vision forgoes the usual pitfalls associated with the revivalist tendencies of many modern guitar bands by simply reviving about 6 things at once and pulling each and every one of them off.
Gloom-drenched drifts of Disintegration guitar back a shivering vocal that’s equal parts Cocker and Horrors as chimes of vintage psychedelia sparkle over a shoegaze whirlpool, each effortless execution of well-mimicked influence amalgamated into an irresistible finished article far greater than the sum of its parts.
We began with a Good Feeling, and in name at least we end with a bad one, namely the new single from L.A. blues buskers Skin & Bones, entitled, well, Bad Feeling. Borne from the duo’s time busking in the burn of the Venice Beach sun, the track strides an attitudinous drive of lurching guitar scuzz, backed by the satisfying march of sparse, pounding drums.
Though it’d be unfair to call the track a reinvention of the genre, the twosome boast a titanic intensity to their staggering swagger, the opaque boom of Taylor Borsuk‘s vocal and Peter Blackwelder‘s mesmeric spins of dusty violin lending the track that extra lash of character to set them apart from the pretenders.
