After a Splendour induced break Music Feeds Faves is back baby! The Music Feeds team wrangle together the fresh new tunes that made an impact on them this week, for the ultimate new music playlist.
Wild Beasts – Tough Guy
Wild Beasts are dirtying it up right now, and I for one am here for it. While 2014’s Present Tense was a triumph of flawless production and intricate layering, on tracks revealed so far from follow-up Boy King, the Cumbrian boys have surrendered to abandonment, leaving meticulous production to the wayside in favour of raw, thrashing, angsty takes, mixed with their brand of soul.
Basically they’ve rediscovered their teenage bravado and channeled it into, as frontman Hayden Thorp describes, a Justin Timberlake meets Nine Inch Nails sound. Tough Guy is chest puffing at its finest. Industrial, distorted guitars and ego-driven lyrics that, at once, revel in and warn of toxic, hyper masculinity.
As the band themselves wrote. “The sloppier and more disgusting we allowed Tough Guy to be, the more powerfully it spoke to us. So we put a leather jacket on it, gave it a distortion pedal and began to flex in the mirror.” There’s something about the (self-aware) bad boy, amirite? / Nastassia Baroni, News Editor
Rainbow Chan – Work
Work is the third single from Sydney producer/singer-songwriter Rainbow Chan’s forthcoming debut album Spacings, and it’s packing some seriously twitchy and DF-friendly industrial pop, as well as a choreographed music video and a central lyric which you’ll forever be repeating in your own head after you hear it — “You’ve got to work harder.”
Spacings is set for release on 26th August, before Rainbow tours the country in September. Now get back to work. / Tom Williams, Staff Writer
Joseph Liddy & The Skeleton Horse – The Big Sarong
From the first glance at their leopard print and nudity themed promo photos and wild album title, The Big Sarong, it’s clear that Joseph Liddy & The Skeleton Horse aren’t your usual run of the mill soul funk revivalists. Not only do they have a sense of humour, they are amazing musos. With influences that, to my ears, span from Bill Withers to David Axelrod and beyond, they are a spectacle to behold, either live or on your hi-fi at home.
Described as “sensually precise groove infected music” it’s probably better you listen to them for yourself rather than have to suffer through my garbled attempts to describe them. Although I will say if I was planning an orgy, this is the band I’d book to play it, albeit coming in anywhere between 8 – 12 pieces depending on what show you catch them at, it would be bound to get a lil crowded. But that’s kind of the point of an orgy I guess right?
Opening and closing tracks are the highlights for me, although slow jam You’re Alright gets a mention too. SEE FULL ALBUM HERE. / Michael Carr, Staff Writer
SPOD – Party Of One
Australia’s favourite seedy uncle SPOD is back with more wondrous musical nonsense that is as difficult to define as it is utterly, insanely brilliant. You now how sometimes you’re driving with your friend and you think of something really fucking funny and uncontrollably chuckle to yourself and your mate goes “what?” and you’re like “oh don’t worry it’s too hard to explain” and they go “no tell me, you have to” but it’s literally impossible to put your brain-lol into any kind of comprehensible language? That’s SPOD. That’s him. He’s that thing.
Party of One pairs the despondence and bravery of booking a table for one at a restaurant, with chirpy (almost-painfully so) synth squelches and what sounds like someone hitting an upturned paint bucket with a frozen bit of bread. The corresponding video is again something that could only come from the mind of such an artistic savant as SPOD, made entirely of stock video footage of the world’s loneliest man and his tablet. It’s like that movie Her, but with much, MUCH less Scarlett Johansson. There’s almost zero Scar-Jo. Just a heads up. / Mitch Feltscheer, Creative Director
Låpsley – Operator (DJ Koze’s Extended Disco Version)
Listening to the original version of this song, I sometimes get inexplicably mad that there are only two choruses. This version however has three choruses. Three! That’s the normal number of choruses in a pop song! Sadly the disco version took the song, which was already quite disco, and chucked on a bunch more production which wasn’t super necessary, but it’s not bad.
This is also the only song that Lapsley has released that is really appropriate to boogie too. It’s still kinda sad, but not in the heart-wrenching, river-of-tears-inducing way that Hurt Me is. What I’m trying to say is, we should all have a sad boogie to this song once a week. / Patrick Campbell, Contributor
Charles Murdoch – POOL
Future Classic lad Charles Murdoch has definitely been creating some more explorative sounds lately, and his new track POOL seems to be the culmination of a deep excavation into ethereal feelings and emotion. POOL certainly isn’t a ‘song’ in the traditional sense, rather it’s a pulsing journey of time, space and rhythm – and Murdoch has absolutely nailed this concept.
Producers who attempt this type of thing often find themselves creating a mindless, numbing, seemingly endless piece of randomness – but despite the lack of structure Murdoch has created a 5 and a half minute effort that really feels like it has a captivating purpose and plot. / Zanda Wilson, Staff Writer
Lokwood – Lokwood EP
With a bit of a hand from old mate and mentor Golden Features and a tight af six-month turn around, former jazz session musician and disgustingly talented producer Lokwood has released his debut EP and it’s already receiving love from Odesza, Peking Duk, Hayden James and now, more importantly, me.
Hooooly shit this is an impressive first solo outing you guys, with Tim’s deep history in all things music allowing this scintillating, indie electronica to simply flow out of him, like someone’s uncapped a genie bottle on a beach somewhere and this epic force has been relinquished, much to the betterment of mankind.
Highlights of the four-track are opener Horizon which rises and falls in perfect waves of elation, whilst follow-up Flow allows Lokwood’s groin-tingling vocals to take centre stage, buoyed by a hand-clap percussion that reaches through your chest, grabs your spine and forces you to move to it. I need this on a dance-floor, like… now. / Mitch Feltscheer, Creative Director
Tame The Sun – Burn
Melbourne act Tame The Sun have torn onto the scene with their debut EP One, oozing enough swagger and blues rock steez to make Lenny Kravitz blush (and remember, this is a guy who stayed chill even when his dick fell out live onstage).
The Dean Williams-fronted group’s freshly-minted disc represents everything that makes Melbourne-bred rock n’ roll some of the world’s finest, tapping monster production to bottle the band’s crackling live energy across 5 huge tracks, from the Hendrixian groove of lead single Back In The Game to the Guns N’ Roses-esque riffitude of Slick State to the punk-injected Gotta Believe.
But for an appetiser, wrap your ears around some of the sleazy, slide guitar-powered stylings of disc opener Burn and just try not to lose yourself in fantasies about southern stripper poles and woozy swigs of straight Jack Daniels. / Emmy Mack, Staff Writer
