Calvin Harris' New Track Will Melt Out Of Your Consciousness Like The Musical Fairy Floss It Is

The days of the big budget cinema-quality music video have pretty much gone – return for investment pretty much spelling their end - allowing that Kanye or Jay-Z will still occasionally burn a Bentley convertible to the ground, just because they can. However, apparently there’s still a place for the occasional colour-drenched, big soundstage production with all the ‘featured artists’ in a row. That it’s Calvin Harris that’s done a Mark Ronson for Feels (Columbia) might be a little surprising. Thus, cavorting among the plastic palm trees guest voices Pharrell (yeah, that guy again…), Katy Perry, and Big Sean wander in and out of shot for a song that comes on all catchy and summery but then – perhaps because it has no real personality of its own - pretty much melts out of your consciousness like the musical fairy floss it is. But don’t worry too much, there’ll likely be another one just like it along soon enough.

Or you can just get your friends to fake up a bondage club, and sing along with that. As you do. There’s already been some mention of the construction and conceits at the centre of the video for Is It Love (Liberation). Let’s face it, you gotta love a trumpet player in a gimp mask. No really, you have to. If you’re commanded to. But going past the visuals – as curiosity-inducing as they are – how about the tune? As it happens, The Creases here make fuzzily joyous, Britpop flavoured music - here with even a bit of an old soul edge kicking in toward the end. Or that could just be the sound a trumpet muffled through a gimp mask. Never enough of that on the charts, certainly. 

There are very few bands who forty years on are still challenging the listener and themselves by making new music of relevance and quality, rather than just resting on their not inconsiderable laurels and back catalogue. And so, The Church head for album number 27 or so, previewing it with Another Century (Unorthodox). The sounds that wash over you are immediately identifiable as theirs, although the jangle some might expect is supplanted here by spacey omnichord waves. The ever-singular Steve Kilbey then cocks an eyebrow and wearily doesn’t explain what’s going on, before the guitars spiral off toward the end. Nothing you expect, and everything you want. 

And as utterly individual as even The Church are, they’re still to some degree a product of their influences. Sure there’s some Floyd and Bowie in there, but as you take in all that’s going on in J.Roddy Walston & The Business’ latest, The Wanting (ATO/[PIAS]/Inertia) you can find echoes of just about anything from the history of pop/rock from the last half-century or so. On a couple of listens: there goes Tom Petty’s girl, some Strokes, Killers, and even a little emo among other things. It’s all very neatly put together, comes out sounding extremely traditional and suitable for commercial FM airplay, but does trying to be all things to all people just reduce who you actually are?

More focused is the melodic-yet-grumpy singalong suitable for soundtracking your drinking that speaks so much of #Straya as presented here by Lincoln Le Fevre & The Insiders. Their take on the suburban blues as displayed on Undone (Poison City) places them neatly in the ball park – given their location, ‘footy oval’ is probably the more correct phrase – of labelmates like masters of the art, The Smith Street Band. Play loud, have a yell, smash a few beverages, repeat. 

If that’s not quite to your taste, perhaps drink in the minimal but beautifully liquid sound of Saatsuma. The collaboration of Cesar Rodriguez and the voice and visual presence of Memphis Kelly are making ever more assured music, Stay (Blank Tape) has a real longing, and a tension to it – but that just might be the fight in the protagonist’s own head over that relationship they probably haven’t got around to telling the other party about, even though they’re the one in it. 

I Know Leopard are also making a strain of modern pop, with a dreamy edge. Let Go (Ivy League) seems to have a lot going on – bright and catchy, yet still just a little puzzled. Then the synthesised strings sweep in to make it look a little bigger on the inside, with a side order of a slightly retro nod to machine-made music of about four-fifths through last century. The telly is a little fuzzy in its focus, but even that seems a reflection of what’s going on. 

Then Sparrows comes at that mix of wispy human vocals over textures of warm computer beds from a slightly different angle. Take My Heart Out (Independent) floats and intrigues as the love at the heart of the story gets a little messy and discomforting among a layered noise, and perhaps a little toward bunny boiling. It’s a misty fog settling on Twin Peaks. Although you feel like you almost can understand why she’s hiding in the hedge outside the window. Almost.