As ever, all the tracks that make it onto the playlist are aces in my book but if I absolutely, positively had to pick no more than five to check out this week, it’d be these.
Meres – Bloody Neighbours (from the album ‘WORRIED SICK’)
🎶 Meres haven’t so much snuck up on us as bum-rushed the whole show, with two single drops and an album in less than three weeks. This is just one track off their debut full-length ‘WORRIED SICK‘, a record of magnificent strength and depth where every track is a wild and unpredictable adventure into magnificent grungy melodies, nervy paranoia, and giddy theatre. There is almost no verse-chorus-verse-chorus here, every track has movements and moods that shift under your feet but never let you actually fall – it’s unsettling but it’s madly exciting, songs with great big soaring moments that you can never really quite grab a firm hold of. I could honestly sit here and write about this album all day long, but that would stop me listening to it over and over and over again, and I know what I’d rather be doing. Astonishing.
Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers – BALCONY (single)
🎶 Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers are back, focussed and precise, with a post-punky thrummer that cuts and slices with a jagged, twitchy mania.
Bakers Eddy – Dust On My Brain (single)
🎶 Bakers Eddy seem incapable of making a track that doesn’t sound like it’s having the absolute time of its life, and it’s no different with ‘Dust On My Brain‘, a typically gleeful slice of polished fun.
Benny J Blake – Slow Drug (from the album ‘The Sharpest Tooth In The Jaw’)
🎶 Benny J Blake caps an excellent run of debut singles with a matching set on his debut album, where ‘Slow Drug’ appears. It’s a confident and accomplished album, tightly written and performed with impressive skill.
Polish Club – SOMETHING ON THE SIDE (feat. DOBBY) (single)
🎶 Polish Club add to this year’s run of crackling AA-side singles, with this track – a collab with DOBBY – matched with an equally swaggering partner track. Both are switched to high-power settings, enough electrical charge to light up a city block.