Amy Shark's 'Weekends' Proves She Is The It-Artist Right Now

There are some seemingly eternal tropes in the pop music: lust, love, love gone (or going) wrong. There’s also escape. Whether this be the taking of those two lanes that can take us anywhere, or the temporary respite and release of the two days at the end of working week – if your workplace agreement allows for such a thing. Adding to the fine canon of such tunes, surprise Hottest 100 overachiever Amy Shark. She is, naturally, looking forward to her Weekends (Wonderlick), that being the time she can be herself and ‘…with you’. Even in those simple desires she has some curious contradictions. In its sweetly sour swing you get the odd sincerity of her need for that time off, even as she tries to be one of the cool kids – which deep down, she probably isn’t. And doesn’t actually need to be. 

Along from those personal confusions a bit, the internal struggle can be even more strained. There’s a small injustice in whatever Future Islands now do being forever coloured by that extraordinary, cathartic, dramatic performance of Seasons on Letterman’s show a couple of years back – amazing as it was. So, for Cave (4AD/Remote Control) they almost overcompensate, removing the idiosyncratic visual of Samuel Herring from the ingredients completely. And sure, old mate signing his way through the lyrics could well be reciting Monty Python’s Cosmos Song – ‘You’re standing on a planet that’s evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour…’ - but as you listen as Herring’s strangely compelling macho vulnerability comes through again after a couple of verses of near-restraint, his beautifully awkward confessions of frustration still prove to be the most important aspect of what they do.

Mention of that ‘…ever-expanding universe’ back there brings us to another individual and eccentric vision. Sufjan Stevens decided even working his musical way through the 50 currently-disunited states wasn’t quite enough, so his look around has become a look about as outward as you can with the naked eye. Saturn (4AD/Remote Control) is one element of the collaborative project Planetarium as he – along with modern classical composer Nico Muhly, regular synth and drums sideman James McAlister and one of The National’s band of brothers, guitarist Bryce Dessner - recast music that first came delivered by a string quartet and seven trombones to something of more human scale, with synths and such. Although Stevens sings this from the point of view of a child-eating god. OK, sure. But the reduced format might simply reduce its affect – it’s still lush, and pretty, but might just be pointless. Which is a bit of a shame, really.

See, if you’re gonna go big, go fucking enormous. Perhaps even absurdly so. Make it “a classic rock space opera on double vinyl…” as the gloriously named Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strind says of The Night Flight Orchestra – even the name seems to recall the sprawling concept albums of the ‘70s. With members drawn from black-clad serious Scandinavian combos such as Soilwork and ArchEnemy, Midnight Flyer (Nuclear Blast) looms over you like that space cruiser at the start of Star Wars Episode 4. And from about the same era of special effects. There’s more synths and artificial choirs coming at you than a Deep Purple reformation record. Sadly, there’s no video beyond the lyric version yet, but if that eventually happens - as it so rightly should – I see much lycra, lots of hair, and ’80s video game screenshots. In their arctic-circle dourness, you’re not quite sure how much piss they’re taking. But you kinda hope they are. 

Back to more earthly concerns, earthily expressed. ‘Last year was a son of a bitch…’ Jason Isbell quite right states as Hope The High Road (Southeastern) unfurls like that well-battered American flag. Conversely, also ‘I’ve sang enough about myself…’ which suggests the often self-lacerating towering confessionals of his last couple of album might be put aside for the moment. This also lets his band, The 400 Unit – named after a hospital mental health ward, naturally – back into the billing. If that makes them the E Street Band to Isbell’s Americana Springsteen, I have no problem with that – though he might. This is more to the rock end of country, but Isbell’s extraordinarily pure, sincere, and just fucking magnificent passion and craft seems intact as the first sample of his upcoming album.

There’s a different slant on America’s current darkness from further north as well. Roya – Persian for ‘Girl’, rightly – comes with a familiar weary Brooklyn ennui, but A Sickness (Burger) has a title also suggesting singer Rahill Jamalifard’s exhausted anger from her perspective as – among other things – a Farsi translator for those caught up in The Great Pumpkin’s half-arsed travel bans. The band contains luminaries from bands you’ve probably never heard of - except for New Zealand’s own Hamish Kilgour, of the near-legendary Clean, whose rattle and thump drumming collides with some scribbled guitars for a feeling that’s both unsettling and familiar in a Flying Nun kind of way. 

But back to that more typical stuff of the rock and/or roll as discussed earlier. Yes, young love has again gone amiss as San Cisco ask the musical question Hey Did I Do You Wrong? (Island City/MGM). It shimmers with summery harmonies as you’d expect from them, but the effect ends up with an odd echo of something English from around 1981, with some extra sunscreen. It has all the over-pondering of personal situations that such a bittersweet popsong should. But for godsake people, just invite them out for coffee and talk it all out. Damn kids today, determined to make things just so damn complicated. Although you may get a good song out of it. 

And so, that looking forward to the weekend thing can even be caught up in your own wounded heart: ‘It’s Friday night, and I feel like dying…’ is the cheery opening bon mot of Flowertruck’s Dying To Hear (Spunk), as youthful angsty pop of the classic model is revealed. It has all the jangle of a life brought up listening to The Cure and/or The Go-Betweens to it, and has there been any better depiction of a love tripping up than a deflating jumping castle? Yes, there’s always a market for this stuff – but yes, we’ll still leap aboard that seductive jumping castle, often forgetting to take our shoes off.