Kelis returns - and the rest of #NewMusicFriday: 17 March 2017

Here we go again...

1) TCTS - Do It Like Me (ft Kelis & Sage The Gemini)
This is an absolute monster. Kelis, as usual, turns everything she touches to gold.




2) Clean Bandit ft Zara Larsson - Symphony
Speaking of Kelis, this lifts the lyrical conceit of her 2010 song ("before you, my whole life was acapella, now a symphony's the only thing to sing") and runs with it. Being Clean Bandit, there are plenty of symphonic strings to hammer the metaphor home.

Not destined to dominate the charts like Rockabye, but a barnstorming pop song nonetheless.




3) Feist - Pleasure
"I was raw and so were the takes," says Feist of her new album, Pleasure. "Our desire was to record that state without guile or go-to's and to pin the songs down with conviction and our straight up human bodies."

It cetainly comes across in this single - which is simultaneously scratchy, lo-fi and utterly thrilling. Like all the best songs, it starts as a lullaby and ends like a riot.




4) Tinashe - Flame
Things haven't really taken off for Kentucky's Tinashe Jorgenson Kachingwe so far - but this song deserves an audience. "Tell me that you've still got a flame for me and we can let it burn," she trills over a discarded Carly Rae Jepsen beat. Recommended.




5) Kasabian - You're In Love With A Psycho
This made me do a big, affectionate chuckle on the tube this morning. The lyrics are deliberately preposterous ("I'm like the taste of macaroni on a seafood stick"???) but it's nice to have Kasabian back.




6) Pond - The Weather
If Kasabian have you in the mood for a bit of psych-rock, this dreamy, kaleidoscopic track from Perth's Pond fits the bill nicely. It will not surprise you to learn it was produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker.




7) Mura Masa ft Charli XCX - 1 Night
Neither artist's greatest moment, but a perfectly serviceable indie-pop jam for Side B of your latest mixtape.




8) Fenne Lily - What's Good?
Self-taught songstress Fenne Lily impresses on this achingly beautiful ballad: "Tell me why good things die," she pleads, her vocals quivering over a lonely, plucked guitar. "Stay the night - because I need this more than I knew. More than I'd like to". Heartbreaking.





9) Machine Gun Kelly feat G-Eazy and Kehlani - Good Life
As mindless and insubstantial as the film it soundtracks (Fate of the Furious), this will undoubtedly be a huge hit.




10) Linkin Park - Battle Symphony
I'm still mystified by Linkin Park's attempt to become OneRepublic. I mean, they do it well - but to what end?

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Feist from a distance

In the YouTube era, music videos should be stark and simple. Don't clutter the frame, choose primary colours, and pack the screen with tightly-cropped close-ups of the performers. That makes everything easy to follow, no matter what size your screen or what speed your your internet connection.

Never one to cling to convention, Feist has made a video that will be almost impossible to watch on your phone.

It's so lo-fi and grainy you could mistake it for a Ukranian pop programme at the height of the Cold War. All you see is a bunch of stick figures in a forest, shot from the safe distance of two miles away, for fear that the potent sexuality of rock and roll might send the nation's youth into a foaming frenzy of furtive frotting.

There are also some animated crows, and the biggest saxophone you have ever seen in your life.

Of course, because it's Feist, there is a REALLY DEEP THOUGHT behind the austere aesthetic and, cunningly, it links in to the song's title, Graveyard. Here she is to tell us all about it:

"I'm not talking about the Graveyard as a location, but of the entangled thoughts you get when visiting a graveyard. Usually you're there to visit someone who's died, and you think in broad terms about what they've become and your own mortality and about what time means. We're alone in the field, always at a distance. And people appear and disappear from your life."

Wow. She must be a right laugh at dinner parties. "Hey, this pasta is shaped like a spiral. Have you ever thought how life is like a spiral and we're all just sliding down it to our inevitable death, like a fusilli helter skelter of mortality?"

Luckily, she makes wonderful music. Including this song. So all is forgiven.

Feist - Graveyards

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Feist + streetdance = video of the month

Canada's Feist is known for incorporating dance into her videos - the free-spirited, primary-colours routine for 1,2,3,4 is one of the most joyous things ever committed to film. Her new video is more low-key, but similarly mesmerising. Feist steps back from the limelight, playing an acoustic version of Cicadas and Gulls from her (excellent) Metals album - while members of the East Oakland dance crew Turf Fienz perform a stunning slo-mo breakdance around her. Just brilliant.

Feist - Cicadas and Gulls


It's really worth checking out some of the other videos by Tuff Fienz if you have time. They came to prominence about two years ago after this rain-soaked tribute to one of their members, who was tragically killed in a car accident, went viral. You can read more about that, and the crew's history on the website for their local newspaper, East Bay Express.

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More muppety goodness

I'm beginning to think I should start a separate Muppet blog, but for now here is the latest instalment of "things that become better with fuzzy puppets in them".

This week, Feist does 1-2-3-4 on Sesame Street. It's so appropriate, you begin to wonder whether she wrote the song specifically to meet Big Bird.

Feist - 1-2-3-4

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Oooh, fireworks

Here is Feist's new video.

Feist - I Feel It All


It is basically a low-budget version of this amazing clip.

Audioslave - Cochise


Sadly, neither is particularly suited to the horribly pixeallated experience of watching a video on youtube (youtube).

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