The Official Chart for June 12
https://soundcloud.com/ladyhawkeofficial/a-love-song
A great week for synthpop, with the release of Ladyhawke’s new album, Wild Things. The whole album is great (I mentioned “Let it Roll” a couple of weeks ago, and “Sweet Fascination” a few weeks before that; the title track is also very good), but I think my favourite track is “A Love Song“. I’m a sucker for this kind of meta song anyway, but especially when, as in this case, it interleaves the love-song cliches its referencing with awed descriptions of events that instantiate them. Another new synthpop album, Avec Sans’s debut Heartbreak Hi. I have to admit I admire the skill with which the record is made more than I love listening to it, but the title track is good, and something about the euphoric leap in the chorus of “Shiver” really gets me. The third, and to my mind least good, synthpop album I’ve been listening to this week is Tegan and Sara’s Love You to Death. There’s something about both the delivery and the songwriting that I find faintly grating, and all the more annoying because I can’t articulate what I dislike more precisely than that. But to be fair, “U-Turn” really goes for the full Stock, Aitken and Waterman sound that a lot of more tasteful recent synthpop avoids. Read more↴