Dangerous & Lazy

The new Demi Lovato track is great. I hope the sadboy R&B tendency (Nick Jonas, Zayn Malik) are taking notes on how you should make moody, sexy, records. 

Another great track is “You’re Mine” by Julia Spada. I was going to say it sounds a lot like Robyn, specifically, “Be Mine,” but listening to “Be Mine” again, it’s not as similar as I thought (even to this live version). But there is a similarity of mood, I think, an artfully crafted yearning despair.

Also artfully crafted in Let’s Eat Grandma‘s debut album I, Gemini. It’s got me thinking about the differences between dream logic and fairy-tale logic. Perhaps fairly-tale logic is dream logic when you’re awake, when the comforting chain of connections in a dream becomes the more sinister sense that there must be a connection somewhere out there. I think both logics are in play on the record, which perhaps accounts for the album being simultaneously charming and disturbing.

I find the idea of a snotty 90s-rave-pop band called “Death Team” highly charming and not at all disturbing.

Even poppier, arguably even more charming, 90s house piano from Ace Wilder. She’s competed twice in Melodifestivalen, which picks the Swedish Eurovision entry, which I assume  is a sign that the BBC should go back to getting Motiv8 to produce the UK’s Eurovision entries.

Katy B on an old-school UK garage remix of an old house track.

Honey Cocaine is continuing to fly the flag for R&bass bangers, this week via a feature on “Faded,” one of many R&bass bangers on Cierra Ramirez’s EP Discreet.

“Bitter” is a more downbeat song than I would expect from a band called Kittens of the Internet.

Palmistry‘s album Pagan is interesting; I guess you could call it bedroom tropical house, in that it shares a lot of its sound with the current trend for tropical house bangers, but repurposed towards a something vulnerable and introspective. Admittedly, sometimes this repurposing involves an awkward imitation of West Indian vocal inflections, but I hope he can get over that, because when the album works, it’s pretty affecting.

Hannah Georgas‘s For Evelyn is similarly introspective, but from a more jazz-indie-synthpop direction.

Though I think we can probably call it a day on indie synthpop, as I find it hard to imagine anyone beating the incredibly detailed, densely involving production on FM-84’s Atlas.

“Sexual” by Neiked (and an unnamed singer) starts of sounding like it’s going to be chilly R&bass, turns into pop-disco.

Alyssa Reid released a cover of Heart’s “Alone” a few years ago which I don’t remember being any good. Her new song, though, is breezy and charming in a Radio Disney sort of way (I’m not sure it’s quite good enough to be included in the ongoing Bridgit Mendler revival, but it’s in that sort of territory).

I’m not sure I’ve heard any of Phantogram’s solo records, although I know them from their work with Big Boi. Their new single is much less laid back than that (if it had come out earlier, I could have included it in last post’s already rather strained “goth week” theme).

I hadn’t been keeping track of what San Jose rapper Snow tha Product had been up to, but it turns out she has a new mixtape (EP? who knows?) out. My favourite track, “Nights,” is built around a sample from W Darling, who I hadn’t heard of previously, but it turns out released a couple of good EPs of kind of folky pop last year.

MyNamePhin is a rapper from the The Private Club, a group that also includes Salma Slims and Madeintyo. Soundcloud comments suggest the beat on his new track comes from the Howl’s Moving Castle soundtrack.

And finally, this week’s jazz-fusion banger is Strange Courage by Michelson Morley