There’s still a delight in finding the song and/or artist where the stars have aligned to be exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. One man with the seemingly uncanny ability to hook into near-perfect music for the moment is Mark Ronson - who’s now taken the obvious step in setting up his own label for such things. And then he goes and finds artists like King Princess. Mikaela Strauss is 19. She’s from New York – she just kinda has to be, really. She writes and plays just about everything on 1950 (Zelig Recordings). There’s that slight Ronson-retro feeling to what is just a beautifully constructed bit of balladry, with its queer sensibility delivered so matter-of-factly that you hope this is way things could and should be. And hell, can she sing. But try and knock off the darts, Mikaela — they’re really not good for you or that voice. And then Harry Styles mentioned on Twitter he liked the tune, and suddenly several million adolescent girls are listening too. Very subversive, Hazza – nice work.
After a period of comparative quiet – in Kevin Parker’s case, that meaning not releasing something every couple of months – Tame Impala are cranking up for the northern hemisphere festival season, and you’d guess a bunch of new music of various models. The soft launch of the return actually gives the domesticated deer second billing on Zhu’s new song, My Life (Mind Of A Genius). It’s an interesting side-swiping of styles as the insistent synths roll on, while Kev seeps in and out with the title refrain, with some lysergic squawky sax and distant guitars echoing in from the next county. It’s all good and well put together, but not particularly distinctive or probably advancing the art of either party.
There’s often that moment for pop artistes when they take a step at going ‘legit’. You know - the musical theatre, darling. It’s an incredibly obvious step for Lana Del Rey – some (ok, me…) would say her whole career has been a fairly consistent bit of roleplay and artifice. An upcoming sprawling project in honour of mega-musical writer Andrew Lloyd Webber – if too young to know, that’s old mate who wrote Cats, Phantom, JC Superstar, all that stuff – cobbles together some classic recordings and some newer reboots of his works across a four-CD package. The fact it’s deliberately designed for the now-venerable silvery disc may suggest the audience it’s after. Thus alongside everybody from Streisand to Beyonce, Madonna to Tim Minchin, Lana gets a run at the ideally titled You Must Love Me (UMG) – a bit of fluff from Evita, which she slaps with her usual layers of greasepaint makeup and aloof detachment.
Back on a more human scale, Harmony have been only a sporadically appearing name over the past couple of years, The Nation Blue’s Tom Lyngcoln fitting in this other thing when he can, and even having a member hive off to be part Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of The Drones’ other thing, the sprawling and shaggy glorious racket that is Tropical Fuck Storm. But Fatal Flaw (Poison City) puts all the pieces back together, and the odd unease provided by the, er, harmonies that fall in behind Lyngcoln’s clenched ramblings give it a sweet wariness that beckons you closer but keeps you at arm’s length. They remain a rare - if sometimes uncomfortable - pleasure.
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And nothing says Australia like a good netball sledge. Thus, Adelaide’s Wing Defence are a band on which to rely – unlike those flash Harriets up the front who just do the goal shooting. Stuck (Independent) is a sweetly blunt thing – scratchily clanging but sometimes sweet guitars wandering around their romantic frustrations of being in a relationship they know is brittle. You can only agree and yell along enthusiastically as they pronounce it all ‘fucked’. Bright indie fist-shaking angst of the classic model. Goes well, and manages to pivot neatly on the one foot.
Alternately, you may need to leave this wide brown land to find your voice. Sharna Liguz went from Melbourne to England, and found a Beatle child with which to collaborate. It led to him changes some of his ways too, as Zak Starkey – son of Ringo, if you haven’t worked it out – stepped out from behind the drum kit and took to the guitar. Hey, it worked for that Grohl kiddie, so why not? Just to confuse the issue, she and they both now operate until the SSHH name, and Rising Tide (BMG) is a deliberately electro-dancey racket of a sort that will get notice while they’re still visiting this hemisphere over coming days.
And then there’s the point where the collision of art and commerce is almost too much. Which is one reason I left this to last, despite it likely to be the most viewed and heard thing here. Anderson .Paak - yes, that's a full-stop there just before his surname, just for the hell of it…- is a fashionably coming artist, and Til It’s Over (Stones Throw) a terrifically smooth piece of hip-hop soul. But how do you get the budget to have Spike Jonze direct a video full of big CGI effects and FKA Twigs doing the dancing and ‘acting’ in it? Oh, there’s an amount of product placement from that corporation that makes iDevices and such. So, is this a four minute ad for the song - or for that sculptured electronic beastie on the coffee table that’s listening to every word you say? Up to you.
