The Single Life: Peaches, Janet Jackson & More

As attention getting phrases go, you’d be hard-pressed to beat ‘Laser Butt Plug’. To presage her first album-proper this decade, Peaches features said item as it aptly dovetails - so to speak - with the title of this new tune Light In Places (I U She). The years beforehand have seen her dabble in real opera, remake Jesus Christ Superstar with herself playing every role, and collaborate with Yoko Ono. All of those make surprisingly perfect sense. But the ‘…light in places you didn’t know could shine’ is somewhat of a return to buzzy electro noise with which most would identify her. Although there’s always a slight unease with an artist who feels the need to shout how much of an iconoclast they are. Do we need to mention the clip might be a little NSFW? Yeah, could be. 

Also reappearing after a similar period of absence, for somewhat different reasons you’d imagine, a new song from Janet Jackson. Coming out around the anniversary of her most famous brother leaving the building permanently – and sadly, you actually wonder if that may be part of the marketing plan – No Sleeep (Rhythm Nation/BMG). Please note, that’s three “E’s” - which should be plenty for anybody. Ms Jackson also returns to formula, this even being put together by Jam & Lewis, her production team dating back to her ‘80s heyday. Now, as then, it’s effortlessly smooth - if maybe polished to a little too much of a high sheen to seem real. 

Down on an altogether smaller scale Ouch My Face call themselves ‘art punk’ - that perhaps contradictory description illustrated quite nicely with the cheerful stalker anthem that is Creep Heart (Milk!). Celeste peers through your curtains and follows you around in a manner that’s only a little bit obsessional. The burping electronics, genuinely messy noise, and that odd comfortable discomfort also has a bit of another member’s perhaps better known combo – that being Ben Ely of the still magnificently idiosyncratic Regurgitator. Also note this band is on Jen Cloher’s and Courtney Barnett’s increasingly neat cottage industry label, Milk! – home to themselves and Fraser A. Gorman among others.  

There’s always that slightly voyeuristic element to some pop songs. How much in those words and that music is truly revealing of their life, their experiences – good or bad. So, Shane Nicholson’s new one is called Secondhand Man (Lost Highway). If you’re aware of his biographical history – including that ex-wife named Kasey – you can read all kinds of meaning into the title alone. Now, if you can put that aside, let’s just boil it down to Nicholson being a songwriter of quality somewhere on the alt.country spectrum, with a suitable quota of tears-in-the-beer bittersweet memories – whether his or someone else’s. 

Taking a variety of somebody else’s ideas and songs – in a totally respectful and artistic way – the collaboration of Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell of Band Of Horses. These are voices which just fit together, with a shared discerning taste in other people’s music as an upcoming album of covers should prove. It contains thing you might expect like JJ Cale, and things you may not - like John Cale. They go with perhaps another of the wild-ish cards as the previewing single, although This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody) (Brown) is from the folkier end of the Talking Heads canon. They make it their own, and probably give David Byrne a few ideas for his next reinvention of the song, it being one of his own songs he’s fiddled with and reinvented over the years.

Then there’s those bands that are immediately recognisable, even in their minimalism. Low’s spacious subtlety remains a beautiful melancholic thing, but with a new song and apparently album to follow only a couple of years since the quiet grace of The Invisible Way, they seemed to have upped a bit from their usual glacial pace of releases. No Comprende (Sub Pop) is them floating through treacle in familiar manner, again with an evolution rather than revolution in the quite wondrous sound they make. 

The equally distinctive sound of Future Islands is sometimes overwhelmed by the visual of Henning having that existential crisis disguised as aerobics class out front. The clip for A Song For Our Grandfathers (4AD) adds some perhaps unexpected insight and angles to both band and singer. Coinciding with the American celebration of Father’s Day – no, I don’t why they have different time for it either – you get the combo as family, fried chicken at the picnic and all. Some of the aunties and uncles look a little askance as Samuel warms to his task, but try and get past that and just listen to what a quite extraordinary soul singer he is. 

A soul voice of a different sort is Ngaiire. From Blue King Brown backing vocalist to this growing reputation as the voice at the front is should only be enhanced with Once (Independent). Adding to the quality of the construction, a couple of the names involved along with her. The song is co-written with the luminous Megan Washington, and you can hear some of her melodic swoop in the swing of it, while the producer is Paul Mac - with all the melodic, mechanical, pop and dance sense he typically brings.