Play On, Give Me Excess Of It

New tracks that have been on repeat this month.

It's that time of the year again. Here are my top 50 albums of 2023 — a year that was dominated once again by female artists, including the incomparable Cécile McLorin Salvant, whose album Mélusine, sung mainly in French and Haitian Kreyòl, is a sublime & mesmerizing achievement.

House of Lull. House of When, the debut solo album from Daughters frontman Alexis Marshall, is a dark, discordant and often dread-filled album that is powered by a percussive wall of noise. 

The atmospheric and foreboding opening track, ‘Drink From The Oceans. Nothing Can Harm You’ sets the eerie mood for the album. The song features piano hits, piercing swells, and Marshall’s plaintive, half-yelled spoken word vocals. Comparisons to Nick Cave and Tom Waits’ “junkyard percussion” are inevitable but Marshall has produced a unique and challenging album that forcefully and unapologetically demands an emotional response from the listener. 

The final instalment in Australian-Zimbabwean rapper Tkay Maidza’s 'Last Year Was Weird' trilogy is a slinky yet fierce EP that lives in the space between pop, rap, soul and R&B. 

‘Eden’, the opening track on Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3, is a summery piano-based number that features a sung hook and gently rapped verse. 

It’s a song where I feel like I was able to articulate my stream of consciousness in depth — which was important because tapping into my honesty has been a big challenge for me in this trilogy and in my personal life.

I remember Dan Farber playing the “Eden” sample and it reminded me of some of my favourite Kanye and ASAP Rocky songs. Gave the perfect setting for me to open up.

The upcoming Velvet Underground tribute album, I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico is scheduled for release on 9/24 on Verve Records. The list of contributors includes Iggy Pop, Michael Stipe, St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Sharon van Etten, King Princess, Kurt Vile, and more. 

Kurt Vile has been covering the Velvet Underground since he was a teen growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs. Vile has acknowledged that Lou Reed  and The Velvet Underground were among his earliest classic rock influences. 

I literally covered “Run Run Run” when I was a kid. In my late teens with my band at the time. So it was pretty cosmic, let’s say. There is a direct connection to certain indie bands and beyond with the Velvets. That’s why the Velvets are a classic. You know it can have doo-wop in there and things like that, but it can also have this jagged noisy thing, and it immediately let me feel like I could do anything. The possibilities are endless. You’re completely free. Unapologetic and effortless.

Atlanta-based soul musician Curtis Harding returns with a new single ‘I Won’t Let You Down’ following his 2017 album Face Your Fear.

The single features a classic soul groove punctuated by Harding’s warm vocals, textured horn playing and powerful gospel backing vocals. 

It’s hard to believe that  Los Lobos is coming up on their 50th anniversary as a band. The legendary East Los Angeles band is back with a new album, Native Sons — due for release on July 30th — which pays tribute to LA’s musical heritage. The album features covers of luminary Angelenos musicians, including The Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, The Midniters, Buffalo Springfield, Percy Mayfield and Latin artists Lalo Guerrero and Willie Bobo. 

‘Misery’ was originally recorded by Barrett Strong, who co-wrote some of Motown’s biggest hits. When the famed Detroit label moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Strong followed suit. Los Lobos frontman David Hidalgo explains in the liner notes to the album, that this minor blues romp with its shuffling guitars and warm rhythm “is probably one of my favorite songs on the album.”

On their latest album, Nine, enigmatic British soul and hip-hop collective Sault continues their political, social, and personal commentary on the Black experience. This time, the focus is on life in the council estates (the U.K. equivalent of American housing projects) that some of the group’s members were raised in, as well as the gang violence and substance abuse that plagues so many of them.

On ‘Bitter Streets’, a female voice sings over a light R&B groove: “I remember when we were young / You made friends with the gun,” before asking: “How can I smile?”

Belgian psych dream-pop band The Haunted Youth’s new single ‘Coming Home’ is an ebullient, expansive and anthemic track that is the perfect soundtrack for summer festival hill dancing. For fans of Slowdive, MGMT and Miami Horror. Enjoy!  

Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster’s new album I Know I’m Funny haha is a lolling and languid affair that is the perfect musical accompaniment to swinging on a hammock on a hot Georgia day. That’s not to say the album isn’t deeply emotional, textured and achingly beautiful. 

For the standout track “Overslept”, Webster collaborated with Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who she calls the biggest influence on her new music. 

I had [Mei] sing on the record because I could not finish this song. It was one of the later-pandemic songs, and I was fucking burnt. I could not do it...And then when I thought about having a guest on this one, my label and manager were sending all these big names, and I’m like, “I don’t fucking care about them! The most influential person to me has been Mei. And if there is anybody to be on this record, I have to ask her, or else it would just be fake.

The lead single from Helado Negro’s forthcoming album Far In is a swirling synth-washed track of sunshining bliss. Featuring a funky bassline from Jen Wasner of Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes and Helado’s laid back vocals, this is the perfect summer song to dance to on the floor all night. 

On her latest release, Quietude, LA-based harpist and composer Nailah Hunter covers some of her favourite tunes, including Jeff Alexander’s “Come Wander.” The track was written for the final episode of "Twilight Zone" and sung by Bonnie Beecher. Hunter transforms this infamous song into a haunting and heartbreaking song that is so immediate and personal it sounds like it’s being performed live in your own living room. 

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Perfume Genius have teamed up to record a cover of Richard Young’s "A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul", which is featured on the recently released album, This is a Mindfulness Drill. The album also includes collaborations with Sharon Van Etten and Moses Sumney. 

Featuring yearning and dreamy vocals from Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius), upright bass, booming horns and eerie guitars, the song is transformed into a transcendent trance-like experience. 

Perfume Genius explains:

I recorded this cover while deep in quarantine. Working on it brought a really welcome energy, I went fully into songworld and put reality on hold for a moment. It’s a big song too, so I got to stay there for a while. Both the original and the arrangement by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble have a truly hypnotic and almost mystical quality, while singing it I tried to stay hyper-present and thought of it like we were all casting one long spell.

LA-via-Seattle trio La Luz are back with a new single, their first new material since their 2018 album, Floating Features. The new track is a shimmering piece of 60′s inspired psychedelic-pop complete with reverb-drenched surf guitar notes and fuzz effects. Shana Cleveland, the band’s frontperson, offers this about the new single: 

I moved to the country a few years ago after living in cities for most of my life. Being out in the middle of nowhere makes it easy to imagine how it would be possible to leave society all together. I love how in this track some of the most unnatural elements of the arrangement (synthesizers, fuzz, effects) create an atmosphere around the instruments that ends up feeling very natural — I can hear bugs buzzing around and bird sounds in different directions.

‘Sodium & Cigarettes’ is the latest single from Half Waif’s forthcoming album Mythopoetics, set for release next month. Nandi Rose, the New York artist who performs as Half Waif, is known for her ethereal vocals that recall Kate Bush, Sinead O’Connor and contemporaries such as Phoebe Bridgers and Adrienne Lenker. 

Describing the new song, Nandi Rose explained:

Sodium & Cigarettes follows the theme of many of the tracks on Mythopoetics and deals with the recognition that no one is going to magically save us or pull us out of our misery. The chorus “okay, give it another day” is something I say to myself when I’ve had a really awful day and everything feels like a wash. It’s a deep breath and a stab at courage — I can face tomorrow, and who knows what possibilities for joy and growth that will bring. While working on the album during the Democratic Primary in early 2020, the song took on new meaning for me in light of political conversations. “I believe in something more than what’s in front of me” became a commentary on people saying, ‘well, this system is what we’ve got and you can’t ask for more.’ I firmly believe that we have to fight for the world we imagine, that everything is possible. So this song is really a quiet encouragement for me, a way to tell myself to stop running, to face what’s coming with clarity and vision and courage, to know there’s another tomorrow.

Sofia Rei is a folk songwriter, vocalist and producer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. For her latest album, Umbral, Rei set off on a solo trek across the rugged Eastern Chilean terrain into the mountains of the Elqui Valley with two backpacks of recording gear to capture “intimate portrayals of a woman fighting for her place in the world.”  

An ardent student of South American folkloric traditions and a Professor at NYU, “Un Mismo Cielo” or “The Same Sky” pays tribute to the past aided by digital technology. 

Molly Burch’s follow-up to her stellar 2018 album First Flower is titled Romantic Images and is due for release on July 23rd. The latest single “Heart of Gold”, a song of unrequited ballad, features Burch’s distinctive smokey vocals, dream pop synths and a bouncy 60′s girl group bop. 

Recorded in Denver with Tennis’ Alaina Moore and Pat Riley producing, the album celebrates the timeless delights of a well-crafted pop song. As Burch notes:

Working with Alaina and Pat felt like making an album with my best friends,” says Burch. “Alaina and I are so aligned in our vocal inspirations that it was almost like we had our own little language. We both love pop music, too, so we’d sneak off and listen to Taylor Swift and Madonna. Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ came out while we were making the record, and we used to blast that in the studio, too.