The lines are blurring again. Obviously, the easy pigeonholing for Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile is ‘Indie Darlings’ or ‘Alternative dream team’, but really they’re the pop stars we should have, we need to have. There just seems something perfectly matter-of-fact about this collaboration. It’s not ‘slacker’ as some would like to genre it, as Over Everything (Milk!) unfolds in its languid way. It’s the morning conversation at cross-purposes, deciding if you’ll make the coffee or encouraging yourself to putting pants on and actually going out for breakfast. It’s a nonchalance in the delivery that they’ve probably worked very hard at achieving. It then wanders off to opposite ends of the house as their distinctive guitar playing carries it to the fade. Actually, I do have an issue with this collaboration – as offhandedly terrific as the album this previews will likely be, you hope it won’t eat up the whole Milk! Records marketing budget at the expense of Jen Cloher’s towering recent release. Buy both.
Coming at the pop ideal from a very different direction, let us celebrate the ‘80s bubbling and yet still funky tone of Donny Benet. Konichiwa (DotDash/Remote Control) is smooth as a jar of Brylcreem – even if Donny needs a little less of that product as time goes on. Lounge music? Yes, if that’s a sofa from Keith Lord or Franco Cozzo circa 1992, which your grandma would never take the plastic off. Even as the obligatory smoky sax solo kicks in while multiple Donnys wander through like extras in a Miami Vice drug raid scene, you have to consider that it’s a finely honed work, no matter how much tongue is in how much cheek.
Conversely, while also of the synth-based school, George Maple makes pop music that is utterly modern in form and intent. Hero (Virgin/EMI) is just a beautifully assured thing. She looks you in the eye, admitting that ‘Shit gets so real…’ but making the message empowering – even from your own demons – somewhere around the second chorus. While this is ‘stand up and believe in yourself’ music, it’s thankfully without the cloying and clumsy aphorisms in the lyrics of some others trying the same thing, which can sound like they’ve been cut-and-pasted from a desk calendar or plagiarised from that internet meme of that kitten desperately hanging onto a branch. You know the one.
Let us remove that wholesome, if clichéd, image from your synapses, and replace with something utterly disturbing on a number of levels. Daniel Lopatin’s Oneohthrix Point Never guise has often dealt in the currency of deeply weird shit, particularly in his movie soundtrack work. Somewhere between Robert Pattinson looking well angsty, a tense standoff with what appears to be a hyena, and – absolutely most of all – a CGI Iggy Pop that seems plucked from some sort of PS2 apocalyptic wasteland game, The Pure And The Damned (Warp) is altogether suitably crouching in the shadows awaiting to scare the living bejesus out of you. The perennially shirtless Igster actually seems to work better these days when working as broken crooner rather than going for his own wounded animal cry, and that makes this sit in your head – even if you really don’t want it to. Advisory and caveat: Perhaps turn a light on before pressing ‘play’ on the link.
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Royal Chant apparently have a clip coming for Shooting Sparrows (Dirty Mab/MGM), but may well be still trying to cobble the budget together from their beer change. Fresh from some handy support spots, including with the reinvigorated Grinspoon, the Chant have delivered a nothing less damn fine tune of what they do. Of the rock, certainly, but one that ebbs and flows with some nice dynamics as it wobbles through with a mood that ranges from both a resigned sigh to a ‘fuck you’. Goes alright.
Ah, the conundrum of the song where you agree with the sentiment, but maybe something gets lost in the delivery. Peter & The Test Tube Babies are unashamedly and unapologetically old-school Pommie punk yobs, still fighting the good fight. One of those good being made fairly clear even from the title of Crap Californian Punk Bands (Arising Empire), of which we accept there are many. Tune yells in your face leaving a few specks of spittle on your cheek as they decry those of combos of shit tattoos and designer Mohawk haircuts. You shake your fist and singalong, at least until about the two-minute mark when the joke and outrage just seem to run out of puff. As have many of their contemporaries.
It’s a strange corner of the music world where your first two albums reach top ten status in the UK, but you’re still considered to have underachieved just a bit. Jessie Ware is friends with Adele and Ed Sheeran, but don’t hold that against her. From another angle, she’s contributed songs to Niki Minaj – but maybe don’t hold that against her either. A three-year break between records has her perhaps reconsidering what she wants to be and sound like, but Selfish Love (Island) leaves you maybe even more confused. It’s moody pop of art and artifice, depending on your interests and generation she owes odd debts to a dreamy pastel land maybe somewhere between Sade and Lana Del Rey. Whether this provides the result she (and her handlers) seek remains to be seen.
