Summer breeze. Makes me feel fine.
About time this summer got started. Garden's blooming. Kids can smell the holidays. Iggy Azalea's on the radio 2.3 times an hour. Yep, it's summer, and I'm staring down a pretty sizeable road trip in the near future. I'm excited to see new things, go to new places, visit some friends and listen to some music. Here are some of the songs I'll be cranking with the windows down:
8. "I Can't Keep Up (feat. Will Heard)" - Tourist
"Will someone ever show me love, won't somebody give a f…?" Somebody get this guy some time on the couch! He's only 21! OK, so fine. The kids will have to be asleep if I'm playing this one (and even then…rumour is they hear everything). The song starts out having the same soulful feel of some other recent electronic hits featuring male vocalists (which stand out because the tendency is for electronic artist to go with the generic female vocalist) such as "Latch" and "Black and Gold" (dang - that's a good one…up for a Grammy and everything!). I just so happen to enjoy those songs, so listening to this one a few times was a no-brainer.
Bonus cut! Adele covering Sam Sparro! Love the throat-clear to kick things off:)
7. "Lost on the Way Home (feat. Solange) - Chromeo
I didn't really want to share more than 5 tracks this month, but then what would have happened had I run into Solange in an elevator and left this off the list? Too soon? I love some of these new albums by acts that have been bubbling under for a while that are just loaded with great collaborations. Disclosure's Settle is the blueprint, but Chromeo's "White Women" is in the discussion this year. Man, Solange has a voice on her.
6. "The Journey" - Tom Misch
Awwww yeah. Cue the dimmed lights, get me this track on vinyl and let the loving begin. So smooth. Reminds me of something that would have been right at home on Mark Farina's Mushroom Jazz compilations back in the day. This is off Misch's debut EP Soulection and, oh, dude's 18!!! I remember what I was doing when I was 18 and it wasn't anything this beautiful. My eyes are officially on Tom Misch.
5. "Okay" - Holy Ghost!
I thought LCD Soundsystem was done. My bad. I've been loosely aware of these guys for a few years (and even recall hearing one of their tracks piped into the sound system at the excellent local bakery Art Is In, scoring points for both the duo and the eatery!), but never got around to digging into their music at home until now. Consider myself initiated.
4. "Mine (feat. Drake)" - Beyonce
Yeah, yeah. The album's been out for half a year. To tell you the truth, it was a bit of a hard listen for me. I found the chopping of many of the songs into multiple keys and multiple time signatures at once interesting yet distracting. "Mine" is a prime example as it essentially plays out in three parts. Oh, and Drake? Canada even thinks your being a bit too Drakey lately. Tone it down. "Partition" is probably my favourite track on the album, but this one's been getting more spins around here lately.
3. "Loveless Way" - Belgian Fog
Ah sweet falsetto. Definitely on my list of "little things that make a song more appealing to me", along with "background noise like traffic or people talking", "removal then reintroduction of percussion" and "use of nonstandard instruments". Given the tempo and feel of this song, it's easy to gloss over the lyrics. Somebody's not in the right kind of relationship. I've read in a couple of places that the inspiration was actually Flemish songwriter Jacques Brel…hence the pseudonym of the artist (who is American and not Belgian).
2. "Southern Sun" - Boy & Bear
It's killing me. This song is very derivative of something retro and I can't put my finger on what band or song I'm thinking of. "Southern Sun" is off this Australian group's second album, Harlequin Dream and, as per Wikipedia, pays "homage to [Australian singer/songwriter] Richard Clapton's relaxed 1970s steel guitar sound". Not knowing anything about Richard Clapton, that's probably not what I'm freezing on. Oh well, I'll figure it out someday.
1. "Coffee" - Sylvan Esso
Hands down, this is the winner of the month. Feist-y/Regina Spector-y/Noosa-y vocals over electronic beats? Sign me up. And this is before I saw the video which was partially filmed at a contradance in North Carolina. I have not contradanced, but have had a number of discussions about it with friends recently and it was serendipitous on some level that it turned up in this video. Sylvan Esso is Amelia Meath (formerly of Mountain Man) and Nick Sanborn (formerly of Megafaun) and "Coffee" is actually the second song of theirs I heard (the other being "Hey Mami", which is also something special, just not AS special). My wife better like this one or it's going to be a long summer.
