Ballad

Today’s Track: Dana Gavanski – ‘Indigo Highway’

April 19, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Dana Gavinski in the official music video for ‘Yesterday Is Gone’ (2020) (Photo Credit: Tess Roby)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has come for me to settle my own nerves like a calming pill for a playful addition to my catalogue with yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Inspired by the live performance aspects of David Bowie, Art-Rock singer-songwriter Dana Gavanski – a Canadian-Serbian musician based in London – almost followed in her father’s footsteps for a career in the film industry, but she developed her skills in music for a year and decided to release her first record back in 2017. Following that time, she has received acclaim for her work from sources like Exclaim, Monkeybiz and BBC Radio 6 Music, with the latter naming 2020’s ‘Yesterday Is Gone’ as their album of the week. She has recorded two live sessions for Marc Riley’s show, she has supported Damien Jurado on a tour across Europe and she has worked with Tuung’s Mike Lindsay as her producer. More recently, she recorded a cover version of King Crimson’s ‘I Talk To The Wind’ as a charity single. In the near future, she will be releasing her second full-length studio album – ‘When It Comes’ – as she gears up to add another release to her impressive resume for an artist who’s only been active since 2017. Set to release through Full Time Hobby on April 29th, she describes the release with “In many ways, this record feels like it is my first. When I could use my voice, I had to focus so there is an urgency and greater emotional trajectory than before. It’s very connected to vocal presence, which extended into an existential questioning of my connection to music. It felt like a battle at times, which I frequently lost”, in her own words. The new LP was recorded between Montreal and Belgrade, finally being mixed at London’s Total Refreshment centre by Mike Lindsay. Check out Dana’s single ‘Indigo Highway’ below.

Gavanski pitches ‘Indigo Highway’ as an unguarded Moog-built track that captures the loss of childhood relationships with sincerity and absurdity in her press release, as she explains, “From the beginning of my interest in songwriting, I’d tried many times to write about this relationship and never could. It felt too fragile, too fraught with experience and distant in many ways. However faraway the time feels, no matter what came next, ‘Indigo Highway’ endeavors to return to what made the relationship special. This song is like a prayer, or a way back, temporarily, to innocence and silliness and sunshine on a field”, in her words. The fun starts off with an idiosyncratic arpeggio groove and a distinctly retro kick drum beat that paves the way for Gavanski’s abstract vocals to find their mark, as lyrics like “I think I’ve found my way back home, Wandering out” and “When you come over and visit me, We’ll sit by the willow tree” offer pastoral and peaceful reflections on plunging yourself back through time to return to your innocence before the times that followed in adolescence. A Piano drops in rather whimsically, at a later point, to a jaunting set of verses where Gavanski passionately projects her voice with lyrics like “I’ll find your face, it’s changing in different ways/And I’m looking around to see” to contemplate the platonic friendships that she has been finding and declining, or naturally progressed away from, during her lifetime. Propelled by an obscure Synth hook and pierced Keyboard melodies that are locked together frenetically by a consistently no-frills drum kit, Gavanski conjures up a presence that feels highly original in the way that she mixes her playful musicality with youthful personality. Her warm crooning feels both familiar and otherworldly when paired to the otherwise percussive arrangement that feels reasonably melodic, but textured by the eccentric instrumentation and the transcendant qualities of her child-like lyricism. There’s shades of Nico and Cate Le Bon in here, as well as more Folk-costumed nods to Aldous Harding or Weyes Blood’s material, and so it should appeal nicely to a decent range of Alt-Folk and Country-Rock fans with it’s bright, yet widescreen brand of quirky atmospherics and whimsical daydreaming although it feels slightly faster in tempo than most of the music by the aforementioned influences. A joyful and cinematic piece that we could all connect to.

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘When It Comes’ (LP/Album) (Available from April 29th, 2022) (via Full Time Hobby)

That brings us swiftly round to the end of the Indigo Highway for today! Thank you for coming along for the ride, and I honestly can’t believe how short this week feels because it’s almost time for a fresh new entry of ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ that will be arriving on the site tomorrow. This time, we’re looking back at a very influential Swedish Prog-Pop duo with a cult following who have been celebrating their 20th anniversary with a number of re-issues since 2021. They are also known for wearing Venetian masks in their public appearances, and managing their Rabid Records label.

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New Album Release Fridays: Kurt Vile – ‘Like Exploding Stones’

April 15, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Watch My Moves’ (LP/Album) (Released on April 15th, 2022) (via Verve Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and you’re tuned into One Track At A Time – your daily destination for all things nice and niche – musically – as we gear up for yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Fresh albums by the likes of 50 Foot Wave, Fozzy and High Pulp are all landing in the shelves of your favourite record shop today, but whenever there’s a new album by the Liberty Bell-award winning Pensylvania-born alternative rock singer-songwriter Kurt Vile joining the equation, it’s always worth a listen. You may know Vile for being the former lead guitarist of The War On Drugs and, in 2017, he recorded ‘Lotta Sea Lice’ with Australian indie rock powerhouse Courtney Barnett as a collaborative LP project. His free-wheeling ninth solo studio album – ‘Watch My Moves’ – is out today via Verve Records, and it is his first album release for that label. This promises to be a surrealistic and psychedelic expansion of Vile’s trippy universe, and it marks his first solo recorded project since 2018’s ‘Bottle It In’ increased his exposure to the world. The main draw of attraction to the new album is that it marks the reunion of The Violators, his dedicated touring and backing band. He will also be touring throughout Europe, the UK, and the US in 2022, with a performance at All Points East Festival in London this summer. On that note – get yourself prepared with the 7-minute ballad, ‘Like Exploding Stones’, below.

Lo-Fi and home-focused, the new album was recorded mostly in his own Mount Airy-based studio of OKV Central to follow in the past footsteps of Waylon Jennings’ DIY recordings in Hillbilly Central, which used to be Tompall Glaser’s studio. He teases, “It’s about songwriting. It’s about lyrics. It’s about being the master of all domains in the music. I’m always thinking about catchy music, even though it’s fried, or sizzled, out. It’s my own version of a classic thing – it’s moving forward and backward at the same time”, in his reflective statement on ‘Watch My Moves’ in a press release. Vile revs up the guitar and vocals from the off-set, laying down a languid sequence of sprawling Synths and a melodic kick drum beat as the very stoner-like guitar riffs simply linger along to his psychedelic vibe and slowly ascending Tempo. Lyrics like “Dreaming of a time where everything rhymed and I was calm, cool and collected” and “Thoughts become pictures, become movies in my mind” paint a vibrant picture of Vile’s mental space, while hooks like “Pain ricochet in my brain, like exploding stones” are set against the backdrop of euphoric Synths and lop-sided guitar lines. His vocals sound plaintive and deadpan, to a point, throughout – yet he comes off as more unburdened and zoned-out than melancholic or miserable by the way that he conjures images of dreaming and travelling without worrying about where they may lead. He references movie marathons, pinball machines and guitar feedback in his lyrics to make him feel self-aware among the highly textured instrumentation. There’s also a neat saxophone solo towards the end recited by James Stewart of Sun Ra Arkestra that blows against the accompaniment of Vile’s running commentary to add more punch to the proceedings. Seven minutes is long for a traditional single release, but Vile manages to justify the length by keeping the elements fresh and paying off the moving parts with his vivid textures and his thoughtful musings on his anxieties. Like Exploding Stones – it goes down naturally and feels like an explosion of concepts.

Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Lotta Sea Lice’ (LP) (with Courtney Barnett) (Released in 2017) (via Matador Records)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post on the blog, and I’ll be back tomorrow to review the returning single from one of the world’s most popular virtual Art-Pop bands who were formed as a collective of creatives assembled across the globe, releasing a UK Top 40 album in 2018. They have also contributed a track to the soundtrack of ‘The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part’ that was released back in 2019.

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Today’s Track: Junior – ‘Long Way Home’

April 12, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Junior (aka 24-year-old rapper/producer James Watkinson) (2022) (Photo via TheMusicEssentials.com)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to walk in the light of a potential future star for yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Making music is central to the coming-of-age story of the 24-year-old rapper, songwriter and producer Junior – whose real name is James Watkinson – who grew up recording a bunch of self-produced work while growing up in a summer cabin, being influenced by his surroundings to pen music about his career aspirations. Although he cites one moment where he got up on stage with Pharrell Williams as an adolescent fan as a definitive one in his career, Junior is becoming one of the best new kids on the block within the UK’s independent Hip-Hop and Grime music scenes for himself. He hails from a self-described “sleepy town” in Bedfordshire, located just outside of London, and his key influences include Jay Z, 90’s R&B and the supporting work of SBTV (An organisation based in London who promote emerging artists through their platform). ‘Lone Way Home’ is a fantastic new single by Junior, which was recently played by Tom Ravenscroft during a recent episode of The New Music Fix on BBC Radio 6 Music.

“I look at music as a way to summarize my life, treating every release like a chapter of a book, starting with my first project, ‘Adolescence’ to my most recent, ‘When A Flower Blooms'”, Junior explains about the statement of intent that he intends to fearlessly communicate on the fresh single, explaining, “On a journey to find my own sound and become who I am meant to be, I have had to walk a long way home”, in a press statement. The wonky soundscape of the track is clearly noticeable from the offset, with a Chill Hop-oriented backing beat comprised of fluctuating Synths and a hazy, psychedelic inverted guitar hook that feels playful and, all the while, Junior uses sharp percussion and a gently cinematic range of Hip-Hop instrumentals to ground himself and think carefully about his songwriting for the material. Vocally, his flow is not too unfamiliar to fans of Eminem or Mac Miller, where he matches a smooth and melodic flow to the offbeat tune of the quirky Hip-Hop backdrop. Lyrics like “From a small town/Breaking walls down, you can guarantee I’m a find way” talk about his ambitions to live an adventurous career despite a less than ideal living situation for his desires and wishes. His songwriting manages to feel intimate, while drawing and expansive. The result is a track that feels equally anthemic as it does personal, with his fresh percussion and his confessional style of lyricism standing out in a Hip-Hop world plagued by Meme-targeting commercialism. There’s no auto-tune here in that sense, but there’s simply an inspiring ballad about taking a leap of faith regarding your next big step in your career and, for Junior personally, revealing your ambitions when the Hip-Hop world takes a hold of you. It gets his personality as an open-minded and well-mannered rapper across nicely, while also establishing some relatable themes for his audience that takes influence from the mildly differing styles of Hip-Hop across the spectrum. This is a great showcase for Junior’s abilities to write, produce and record his own music all at once. This could be a star of the future.

Pictured: Junior in a promotional photoshoot for a ‘Live At Esquires’ gig (2021) (Photo via juniorthe40/Twitter.com)

That brings me to the bottom of the page for another morning! Thank you for reading all about what I had to say about Junior today, and I will be back tomorrow to go ‘retro’ with a new entry of our weekly ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ feature on the blog. We will be revisiting a classic 80’s Arabic Pop/Dance track by a Cairo-based musician who is largely seen as the godfather of Al Jeel Music throughout Egypt and Libya. In 2011, he condemned the actions of Muammar Gadaffi – his native country’s then-leader, against the Libyan population and issued a plea to the fellow Egyptians to help them.

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New Album Release Fridays: Kae Tempest (feat. Kevin Abstract) – ‘More Pressure’

April 8, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘The Line Is A Curve’ (LP) (Available from April 8th, 2022) (via Fiction Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to tune our ears to the more club-oriented gears of one of the modern day’s most progressive poets for ‘New Album Release Fridays’ with yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! An album about letting go and falling instead of anxiety into surrender, ‘The Line Is A Curve’ has been shaping up to be absolutely ace. This is the newest album from Kae Tempest, a poet from Westminster who has become a prominent name on BBC Radio 6 Music’s playlist throughout the 2010’s. Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, shedding their former name of “Kate Tempest” and embracing the pronouns of they/them. Since becoming active in 2012, Tempest has been nominated for the Mercury Prize twice and they were nominated for ‘Best Female Solo Artist’ at the BRIT Awards in 2018. Outside of their music, Tempest is also a Sunday Times best-selling author and they won the ‘Breakthrough Author’ award at the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards in 2017. ‘The Line Is A Curve’ looks to repeat the success of these projects, and the BRIT School alumni mastered the record at Abbey Road Studios. It was produced by Dan Carey, which will become fairly obvious to you in a moment, executive produced by Rick Rubin and mixed by Christian Wright. The LP features guest contributions from artists like Lianne La Havas, Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten, Confucius MC and more. The cover photograph was shot by Wolfgang Tillmans, who worked on Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’. Speaking about the collaborative process of the album in an interview for NME, Tempest says, “For me, this album is about increasing resilience and raising your threshold for tolerance and acceptance and it’s a very beautiful album, because so many people involved in making it are people that I’ve known and loved for a very long time”, and it is out today via Fiction Records. ‘More Pressure’ isn’t the latest pre-release single from the new record, but I chose to write about it because I feel it is a track that really showcases how Tempest can stretch that voice beyond traditional Spoken Word genre boundaries. It features a verse by Kevin Abstract – who you might also know from their music in Brockhampton. Give it a spin.

“Throughout the duration of my creative life, I have been hungry for the spotlight and desperately uncomfortable in it. For the last couple of records, I wanted to disappear completely from the album covers, the videos, the front-facing aspects of this industry”, Tempest tells Brooklyn Vegan, later elaborating, “But this time around, I understand it differently. I want people to feel welcomed into this record, by me, the person who made it, and I have to let go of some of my airier concerns. I feel more grounded in what I’m trying to do, who I am as an artist and as a person and what I have to offer”, about their decision to include an image of themselves on the LP’s cover artwork for the first time. This sense of progression and comfort is replicated by ‘More Pressure’, which is anchored by abstract lyrics like “More pressure, more release, your eyes, your cheeks, your features crease” that communicate ideas of taking the weight of the world away from your shoulders and believing in your own body for reassurance. Lyrics like “One step forwards, two steps backwards/One soul’s epiphany, another soul’s madness” hits you with a more virtuosic nature, as Tempest talks about reach and distance through reflection, resulting in a sense of unsullied intimacy that is delivered in Tempest’s emotive space between music and speech. Abstract, as the featured credit, adds more intimacy to the final verse and trends towards a Hip-Hop direction, as the Synth beats become more liberating behind here. Speaking of the instrumentation, it feels interesting in not being a far cry from Sinead O’Brien’s ‘Kid Stuff’, a cracking tune by the Irish Post-Punk poet, in the similar sense of how the Dance-Rock influences come together through the insulating Synth rhythms. Instead of reaching out as most club-driven music does, however, Tempest looks inward to gain cues for the lyrics and reflect on the weight and stress in a relatively personal way. It certainly feels like some of Kae’s most accessible work, but the almost Disco-tempo melodies and the spacious bass lines still make their vocals stand out amongst the typically mainstream variety of modern music. Ultimately, ‘More Pressure’ is a strong showing that pin-points how Tempest can stretch their voice in fascinating ways to meet their own needs with the more rhythmic structure of the track and the idiosyncratic Dance influences that are still of Tempest’s heavy and reflective mood in prior releases, but the flow is simply much groovier and so it really stands out whenever you hear it on the radio. It is a really euphoric release of tension.

Pictured: Kae Tempest performing ‘People’s Faces’ at Paste Studios, New York (2019) (Photo via Paste Magazine)

That brings us to the end of another daily post! Thank you for giving a moment out of your day to support the blog, and I will be back tomorrow to review some more new music from a recent favourite on the site. This Brighton-formed indie rock band were listed among the Top 40 New Artists of 2018 by The Guardian and their previous studio album – ‘Every Bad’ – was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2020. It also appeared on year-end best lists by Under The Radar, Stereogum, Paste and Pitchfork.

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Way Back Wednesdays: The Future Sound Of London – ‘My Kingdom’

March 30, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Garry Cobain (Samples/Production) & Brian Dougans (Samples/Production) (Date n/a) (Photo via Clash)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for us to go ‘retro’ for ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ with yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! If you are not sold on the strength of the premise of a diverse tapestry of dystopian, dark-leaning IDM and Electronica with a loose theme of urban dilapidation and urban decay, with a hint of paranoia and a Cyberpunk aesthetic alone, the UK Top 15-charting single of ‘My Kingdom’ may just convince you otherwise. This single was released in 1996 by The Future Sound Of London – an English electronic music duo formed in 1988 by Brian Dougans and Gary Cobain who met in Manchester, ironically – in the build-up to their third studio album ‘Dead Cities’ they released in the same year. The record is an expansion of the ideas they explored on 1994’s ‘Lifeforms’ EP, a more nature-oriented and pastoral record, albeit with a darker variation of sounds. ‘Dead Cities’ also included the duo’s highest-charting single ‘We Have Explosive’, which was licensed as the theme track for the ‘Wipeout’ video game on the original Playstation, and it reached #12 in the UK Singles Chart. ‘Dead Cities’ is personally one of my favourite electronic records of the 90’s because it serves as a road trip of post-apocalyptic Ambient textures, but what really makes ‘Dead Cities’ click together so neatly is the stylistic tweaks which the duo make throughout it. The ballad-style tone and floating Piano chords of tracks like ‘Max’ are very different to the ring tone-style synths of tracks like ‘Antique Toy’ or the insistent drilling of the title track that are more harsh and dissonant in mood, or really feel like they are attacking the listener. Throughout it’s 12 tracks (and a hidden segment that starts around one minute after the final track plays like an MCU-style Post-Credits scene) and a hefty duration of 70 minutes, The FSOL create a varied tapestry of electronic sounds spanning through Psychedelia, Trip Hop, Techno, Dark Ambient, IDM and Dub that are tethered to a connected, if non-singular, vision – and I also feel the record has a softer side to it that can be overlooked in favour of the more crowd-pleasing Claustrophobia of EDM cuts like the more well-known single. ‘My Kingdom’ was the preceding single to ‘We Have Explosive’ and it was given a fairly low-budget looking music video that was animated by Buggy C. Riphead – who designed the graphics of the LP’s physical copies. The CGI is dated by modern standards – but their imagination is still there. Check it out below.

‘Dead Cities’ is an underrated classic which was released on the major label Virgin Records in the UK along with Astralwerks in the US, and many music critics have attributed the album’s mastery to being the reclusive duo’s most accessible work commercially, although it still unmistakably sounds like them. In fact, ‘My Kingdom’ got to #13 in the UK Singles Chart, joining an elite club of bizzare top 40 radio hits like The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Setting Sun’ and The Orb’s ‘Toxygene’ from around it’s then-contemporary times too. The opening of ‘My Kingdom’ carries it’s weight with an Urban Trip-Hop feel as ethereal samples that give the drums an African percussion feel guides us through a gradual lift-off, before the sampled voices of an elusive choir and wistful Asian-style Horn samples that evoke a stop-and-start pace slowly join the fray of the scattered soundscape, with breakbeats and light downtempo ambience separating the structure of the elements to blend them into a more cohesive whole together. The choir section is a highlight, as the duo’s modulation makes their voices feel distant and hollow, conveying the mournful themes of a ‘Dead City’ with expert precision. I also love how the mixture of aggression and percussion on ‘My Kingdom’ has a dark edge to it and takes center stage as the drawing, expansive structure of the piece comes into view. The duo dip their toes into Blade Runner and Ennio Morricone samples specifically here, and they combine the downtempo elements of those original recordings with gloomy, foggy Ambient Electronica sounds neatly here, almost creating an abstract characteristic of a dense forest that could remind you of their prior ‘Lifeforms’ work quite noticeably. ‘My Kingdom’ has the power to give you goosebumps because of it’s darkness and vibrant atmosphere, with a certain doom-and-gloom or woe-is-me tone that is turned into something surprisingly beautiful and hypnotic as the samples stretch along it’s duration progressively and conjure up the power to create it’s own experience that feels a little seperate to ‘Dead Cities’, but is enhanced by the context of the sounds, tones, atmosphere and textures of the album it is from. It is a very well-crafted record which each lover of music should experience.

Pictured: Inserted Artwork for ‘Dead Cities’ (CD) (Released in 1996 via Astralwerks/Virgin EMI) (Photo via Eil.com)

That brings us to the bottom of the page for another roughly 24 hours period, and thank you for taking a short moment out of your day to support the site and the independent creatives that I, in turn, support here as well. It is back to new music recommendations tomorrow, as we turn our attention towards a new single by a now-duo of Indie Pop and Disco proportions from Brooklyn, New York who previously included Coco’s Dan Molad amongst their line-up. Their albums have also received acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, Paste and The Village Voice too. Their new LP – ‘Second Nature’ – will release on April 8th via Mom + Pop Records.

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Today’s Track: The Red Hot Chilli Peppers – ‘Black Summer’

March 26, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Unlimited Love’ (LP/Album) (Available from April 1st, 2022) (via Warner Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to turn up the heat with a brand new single by a scorching California-based rock band with yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Holding the reputation of being one of the most successful bands in contemporary Alternative Rock with sales records on the US Billboard charts for their singles, six Grammy award wins, over 100 million record sales worldwide and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, alongside the band receiving a star on Hollywood’s Walk Of Fame earlier this year, it’s a pretty big deal that The Red Hot Chilli Peppers are making their first proper comeback in quite a long time, although I have to hold my hands up and admit that I am a little late to the party for this occasion. ‘Unlimited Love’ is the band’s 12th studio album and their upcoming follow-up to 2016’s ‘The Getaway’ and it is currently set to be releasing as soon as April 1st – that is next Friday – on Warner Records. The main draw for this new release is how it is their first album to feature the returning bassist John Frusciante, who originally left the band in 2009 and rejoined in 2019, replacing Josh Klingghoffer. In addition to this, it re-unites the band with longtime producer Rick Rubin for the first time since 2011. The band will also be going on a new world tour to support the album, beginning this June. Check out their comeback single ‘Black Summer’ below.

“Our only goal is to get lost in the music. We spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another, to make the best album we could”, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers explain about their impending LP, adding, “Our antennae attuned to the divine cosmos, we were just so damn grateful for the opportunity to be in a room together, and, once again, try to get better. Days, weeks and months spent listening to each other, composing, jamming freely, and arranging the fruit of those jams with great care and purpose. The sounds, rhythms, vibrations, words and melodies had us enrapt”, in a press statement. ‘Black Summer’ finds lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis waiting for a period of depression to end, as the title may indicate to you, as he croons somber refrains like “A sailor spoke too soon, and China’s on the dark side of the moon” and “The archers on the run, and no one stands alone behind the sun” that are delivered over the top of some familiar fretwork from guitarist Flea. The track has a naturally uplifting chorus that it transitioned neatly between a tastefully meandering lead guitar solo in the middle of the track, and the fluctuating Drums help to convey the fuzzed-out and psychedelic sounds of classic Chilli Peppers’ music. Lyrics like “Riding on a headless horse to make the trip” dice with death as a brief theme, while the final bridge of “Waiting for another black summer to end” is destined to be sung by festival crowds later in the year. The main vocals have a fairly chilled and a reasonably paled back feel to them, while the ascending guitar solo ensures that we ride a propulsive wave until the duration meets its end. Most notably, it follows the formula of how you would expect a Red Hot Chilli Peppers track to sound while making the sound feel contemporary due to the explorations of mental health that captures the mood of a modern male audience. It is an anthemic single for those who struggle with the exhaustive daily commitments of modern life, but the sound takes obvious cues from nostalgia and the records of The Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s past. Ultimately, I felt this rolled along rather nicely and one of my initial fears was that the band may be a bit too old now to pull off their old lyrical shtick as effectively. On the contrary, the songwriting feels mature enough to bypass that issue and despite feeling a bit predictable, it is crowd pleasing stuff that just sounds like The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It was better than I expected, and it feels as relieving as the pandemic-ridden closure of a black summer.

Pictured: Anthony Kledis (Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar), ‘Flea’ (Bass Guitar/Trumpet/Piano/Backing Vocals), Chad Smith (Drums/Percussion) and John Frusciante (Lead Guitar/Vocals/Keyboard) (2022) (Photo by Gus Van Sant)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest post and I hope to see you again tomorrow for ‘Scuzz Sundays’ where I have chosen a simple song about love that would kind-of fit the theme of Mother’s Day too. I was inspired to cover this early 00’s Glam-Rock classic due to the band’s frontman’s recent appearances on both ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’ and ‘Rock Till You Drop’ on UK television screens.

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Today’s Track: Maia Friedman – ‘First To Love’

March 21, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Under The New Light’ (LP) (Released on 11th March 2022) (via Last Gang Records)

Good Morning to you! This is hard-working writer and aspiring radio producer Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has finally come for me to keep your ears entertained by yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Maia Friedman was already a skilled vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter before she even embarked on a solo career, as you may already know Friedman from her roles in the Brooklyn-based indie rock bands Dirty Projectors and Coco. Growing up in the Sierra national forest region of the Central California area with her father (a film editor) and her mother (a Jungian Psychoanalyst), Friedman began learning how to play instruments at a very young age and she has since become a big part of her local music scenes for her various roles in musical projects including Toebow, Bobby and Uki Ika Ai – as she joked to Melody Maker in an interview, “Collaborating gives me the juice”, a few weeks ago. Her latest full-length album – ‘Under The New Light’ – finds Friedman undertaking the role of a spiritual comforter and a serene healer for the listener, where she tackles the deep contrast between topics such as intimacy and growth, and light and darkness, throughout the duration of the long-awaited solo record. She began working on the material four years ago as she balanced putting the track listing together with her duties of being a music teacher in New York. Dan Molad, her fellow band-mate from Coco, helped her to produce the album. Additional work also came by way of her collaborators Tom Deis and Peter Lalish. Check out the single – ‘First To Love’ – below.

‘First To Love’ is given even deeper meanings by the aid of the Joshua Kilcoyne-directed music video, and Maia Friedman says of the new cut, “It is a humbling privilege to love someone in all their humanness and imperfection, to not only support but celebrate them through their journey of growth and exploration, to be by their side as they evolve into new versions of themselves”, adding that her lyrics roughly translate to, “I will love even the deepest layers of who and what you are. A question I pose to myself is, what if this person were me?”, in her press statement. Her ethereal track starts off with glitched Synths that replicate the sound of a heart monitor of a hospital to my mind, a polished sequence which runs throughout the track, and they are softly set against the backdrop of a warmly acoustic guitar melody and a soft bassline. Lyrics like “Look as the clouds pass overhead/I will count them until the daylight ends” and “Wait as the roots find their way/They’ll grow deeper with each passing day” are softly spoken and they carry the verses with a low-lit and wide-eyed tone. The chorus features more swooping and direct refrains like “Peel away/Keeping me up through the night” and “Escape/Be whatever you like” that position Friedman in a unique sense of directly addressing you as her audience, with the details of her personal situations feeling a little enigmatic in favour of giving you a space of reflection and free-wheeling tranquility as a listener. I feel like these more Folk-inspired sections recalls the cinematic soundtrack style of her work in Coco, but it goes quite far beyond an ‘Expansion Pack’ mentality of that sound as the intriguing electronic textures and the whimsical Classical influences of the serene vocals feel different enough to her material with those other projects. Overall, ‘First To Love’ is a bit of a slow burn, but it builds up to a nice sense of energy and it has a strong emotive core that is filled with wistfully produced Strings and warm Dream-Pop instrumentation that placed an emphasis on the most smallest and profound aspects of what it means to be a human and the details of subjects like sensuality and touch with an in-depth contrast that finds her striking out sturdily, as a relatable songwriter.

Pictured: Maia Friedman in Coco (along with Dan Molad & Oliver Hill) (2021) (Photo Credit: Stella Hartmann)

If you’d like to hear some of the magic that Maia has created in Coco – look no further.

‘Last Of The Loving’ (2020) – https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/10/22/todays-track-coco-last-of-the-loving/

‘Come Along’ (2021) – https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2021/12/06/todays-track-coco-come-along/

Pictured: Cover Art for Coco’s ‘Last of The Loving” (Single) (Released on 4th August, 2020) (via FCA Records)

That brings me to the end of the page for another day! I have little else to say, other than to thank you for checking out what I had to share with you for today, as your support is always highly appreciated by me. I’ll be back tomorrow to review one of the promotional singles from an imminent album being put out by a TrumsØ-formed Progressive House and Dark Ambient duo whose achievements include two Grammy Awards nominations, some worldwide tour performances, and a Robyn collaboration.

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Today’s Track: Maylee Todd – ‘Show Me’

March 10, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Toronto’s Maylee Todd in a recent photoshoot to promote ‘Maloo’ (2022) (Photo via TheStar.com)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has arrived for me to guide you through yet another exciting daily track on the blog from a very brave and ambitious singer-songwriter, given how it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! ‘Brave’ and ‘Ambitious’ are just two words that describe the Toronto-based Art Pop musician Maylee Todd, who is new to this young writer’s eardrums, who has experimented with instruments as obscure as the Paraguayan Harp and the Tenori-on in her career since she began recording material in the 00’s. Todd has played across numerous festivals including the Crossover Jazz Fest and the Billboard Live Stage, she has performed alongside the likes of Janelle Monae, The Budos Band, Aloe Blacc and Thundercat on stage throughout the years, and she contributed her vocals to Bob Wiseman’s collaborative LP release ‘Giuletta Masina At The Oscars Crying’ in 2012. Todd was also the creator of Virtual Womb, a practical art exhibition where the audience walks through an enlarged CGI image of a Vagina and lies on the floor, awaiting the vibrant projections that float across on the ceiling, in 2017. Maylee Todd’s music seems just as visual and provoking, as a wide assortment of Indie Pop, Prog Jazz, Psych Funk, Bossa Nova and more have been incorporated into the sounds of her musical projects. Her latest full-length album – ‘Maloo’ – was released on March 4th via Stones Throw Records – an eclectic Funk, Jazz and Soul specialist label based in Los Angeles, California that has introduced several amazing artists like MNDSGN, John Carroll Kirby and Kiefer to my streaming libraries throughout the last few years of my work. Let’s give ‘Show Me’ a listen below.

To produce her latest artsy-craftsy LP project, Maylee Todd spent a lot of time researching VR throughout the pandemic, which led to some ideas on utopian, futuristic technology. The result is ‘Maloo’, a fictional character that she has designed in virtual reality that she created while working on the story and setting of a prototype VR video game, as she learned the skills of 3D modelling and body tracking to bring her vision to life. Dubbed as ‘The Age Of Energy’, a virtual space where the character is based, the concept album and the ‘Maloo’ avatar are influenced by intimate, personal origins. As Todd writes, “We participate in the digital landscape and our digital life has real-life implications”, in her press statement. Musically, she wrote and recorded ‘Show Me’ as the introductory single with the Yamaha Tenori-on – a discontinued electronic sequencer that was built by Toshio Iwai, a Japanese interactive media and installation artist. Her single begins with some glitched keyboard chords that convey visuals of futuristic cyberspace and post-modern technology immediately. The bass grooves grow deeper as her downtempo vocals become more hypnotic, and she allures you in to ‘Show Me’ with a noticeably Soulful skew that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sly & The Family Stone or a Toro Y Moi record in it’s nostalgic, but free-form, nature. Lyrics like “Watch the birds, take their form/Icy hands, blood is warm” complement the peaceful and tranquil vibes, while the minimalist chorus of “Show me, your heart” is deep and intimate in it’s Lo-Fi textures. ‘Maloo’ may be conceptually driven and visually influenced at large, but the single is accessible enough to a fairly mainstream because it feels simple yet not simplistic. I also really admire the work that Todd has put into ‘giving the project her all’ by focusing on how the audio-visual aspects of the piece were written in tandem with her vocals. It reminds me of Bjork and St. Vincent, who are undoubtedly driven artists that have similar characteristics of boldness and communicating an idea through all aspects of the media at their disposal. In conclusion, it seems clear that Maylee Todd has a lot more to ‘Show Me’ – and I look forwards to seeing the rest of it.

Pictured: Vinyl Copy of ‘Maloo’ (LP/Album) (Released on March 4th, 2022) (via Stones Throw Records)

(That brings us to the end of the page for another day! Thank you very much for reading what I had to say about Maylee Todd for a few moments today, and I’ll be back tomorrow to guide you through a sneek peek at one of the weekend’s notable and new album releases. This week’s post involves the debut LP release from an emerging Alternative Rock 4-piece Post-Rock band who have been supported by the daytime playlist of BBC Radio 6 Music and they have been praised by NME. If you’re a fan of hard rock outfits such as Coach Party and Kid Kapichi – you’re going to enjoy it!

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Today’s Track: Mitski – ‘Love Me More’

February 28, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Laurel Hell’ (LP) (Released on February 4th, 2022) (via Dead Oceans)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for me to get down to business as we leave the shortest month of the winter for a warmer March as we head into Spring by covering one of the most crucial releases of February for yet another daily track on the blog, given how it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write about a different piece of music every day! Dubbed as the “best young songwriter” of the US by The Guardian earlier in the past month, the Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer Mitski has been raging up a storm domestically and internationally with her sixth studio album – ‘Laurel Hell’ – which she released to a healthy buzz and a positive reception on February 4th via the Dead Oceans label. Taking its title from a Folk term for being trapped in thickets of Laurel, an English name for common trees and plants of the Laurel family, that grow in the Southern Appalachian Mountains region of North-Eastern America. Her new album peaked in the top ten of the albums charts in the UK, Australia and Ireland, and it was the best-selling album in the US during its first week on sale, meaning that a wide variety of listeners heard Mitski’s dynamic take on nostalgic Disco, Synth-Pop, Indie Pop and Electronic Rock styles. I read a fascinating story that Mitski had to quit music to love it, as the record was originally reportedly going to be a stinker on deliberate purpose so that Mitski could finalise her current record contract and leave music peacefully, but that thankfully, didn’t turn out to be the case, and her vulnerable songwriting regarding topics like insomnia and mental weight went through many iterations over the last three years, with the record originally designed to be some form of an Avant-Garde Industrial Punk album, later becoming a softer Country album, before Mitski experimented with electronic production and the record was conceived in the final form that you can hear now. The final pre-release single was ‘Love Me More’ that you can preview below.

“Love Me More went through the most iterations out of all the songs on the album. It’s been too fast, too slow, and at some point, it was even an old style Country song”, Mitski said of the single, which has been accompanied by an official music video that was directed by Christopher Good, re-uniting Mitski with the creative behind her ‘Nobody’ video from three years ago, and she concludes, “Finally, I think because we had watched The Exorcist, we thought of Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’ and experimented with floating an ostinato over the chorus. As we steadily evolved the ostinato to fit over the chord progressions, we began to hear how the track was meant to sound”, in her press statement. Starting off with “If I keep myself at home, I won’t make the same mistake/That I made for 15 years” in the opening verse, Mitski begins to croon about her own experiences with finding a fulfilling relationship while embracing a bright stadium-friendly Synth-Pop sound that feels so futuristic yet nostalgic in its tone and delivery, and so a similar collaboration with The Weeknd or La Roux wouldn’t feel out of place for her at some point in the future. A glistening sequence of piercing, self-reflective lyrics like “I wish this would go away/But when I’m done singing this song/I will have to find something else, to do to keep me here” complements a scattered soundscape of early 80’s New Wave synths and skittering up-tempo drum machine melodies that fit the musical ballad style of the lyrics that find Mitski crooning dramatic lyrics like “I could be a new girl/I will be a new girl” and “Here’s my hand, There’s the itch/But I’m not supposed to scratch” as the harshness of the impending Synths see a melodic increase, while never quite exploding into a full-blown club anthem, and so I thought that Mitski paced her instrumentation nicely here. The chorus has a more commanding presence, as she frantically pleads lyrics like “Drown it out/Drown me out” with a demanding atmosphere as the gauzy Synths soundtrack her way to finding nourishment. The end product feels a little scattered to me, but the production is attentively polished for what counts as a fully independent release and she does a great job of valuing her personality above a strive to ‘just have’ a commercial hit, with thoughtful lyrics that maintain the 80’s Pop influences of the track while avoiding the more recycled tropes of the genre. ‘Laurel Heaven’ more like.

Pictured: Mitski Miyawaka in promotional artwork for ‘Laurel Hell’ (2022) (Photo by Ebru Yildiz/Yahoo.com)

That’s all for now! Thank you for tuning into One Track At A Time today, because your support is always very highly appreciated, and I’ll be back tomorrow to guide you through a refreshing single by a group of San Francisco-based shoe-gazers who will release their first new album in a long break of 10 years in March via Fire Talk Records.

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Scuzz Sundays: The Verve – ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’

February 27, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Richard Ashcroft (Lead Vocals/Rhythm Guitar/Keyboard/Percussion/Kazoo), Nick McKabe (Lead Guitar/Accordion), Simon Jones (Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals) and Peter Salisbury (Drums) (2008) (Photo via PR)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to revisit one of the Pop-Punk ghosts of the late-90’s for another installment of ‘Scuzz Sundays’, as we remember what the Brit-Pop scene had to offer at the time for yet another daily track on the blog, since it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Active between 1990 and 1999 – with a reunion in the mid-00’s – The Verve fit squarely into the Brit-Pop movement that introduced bands like Oasis, Supergrass and Coldplay to the world at a nifty convenience. However, in 1997, they proved that rock music could get very emotional. Having appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, won an impressive number of BRIT Awards and issued one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history with 1997’s ‘Urban Hymns’, the band were able to reduce most of their fans to tears when the familiar sound of ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was ringed out across the packed out stages of V Festival and Live At Reading. Ranked as #7 on Channel 4’s list of the ‘100 Greatest Number 1 singles’, the sombre sound of the single unintentionally captured the mood of the nation when the beloved Princess Diana died because it was released the very day after it had occurred. Featured on ‘Urban Hymns’, the single went straight to the top of the UK Singles Chart and it remains popular, having been placed at #78 on the ‘150 Best Tracks Of The Past 15 Years’ list that NME compiled in 2011. The music video carries on from the iconic street set-up of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ as the beginning of the piece shows Ashcroft and his band-mates walking across the same street, with the events directly following the prior video. It’s nice to see a level of inter-connectivity there and we rarely see it now. Have a box of tissues at the ready and stream it below.

“Whenever we played that live, there would be rows of grown men crying”, Ashcroft said of the somber tone of the single, as per FreakyTrigger.co.uk, describing, “It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big concert”, in an interview. Although often linked to a battle with recreational drug abuse, fans have also linked ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, which was reportedly written in 1995, with the passing of Ashcroft’s father, with the sensitive lyrics like “And I hope you’re thinking of me/As you lay down on your side” and “Now the drugs don’t work/They just make you worse/But I know I’ll see your face again” sounding like they could have been drafted together in Ashcroft’s mind as he sat beside his father in the hospital ward, and so these lyrics really pack a hefty punch given the bleak subject matter and Ashcroft’s promise to be re-united with him in the afterlife. The instrumentation isn’t really ‘Scuzz Sundays’ by nature, with a subtle String section and a steady guitar riff leading the downtempo melodies of the track, but it retains enough of the core elements of Rock music to meet that categorization, for the lack of a better term. Ashcroft was mostly known for throwing in some elements of Neo-Psychedelia into his motifs, but ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was more intent on dragging him back to the inescapable darkness of life on Earth. The chorus seems arresting and personal, with refrains like “If you want a show/Just let me know/And I’ll sing in your ear again” that references a slightly chemical-defined relationship with his dad while nestling the smaller sequences into a bleaker, larger narrative and Ashcroft illustrates a maze with a loss of direction as he conveys a mixture of confusion and exhaustion, with the most profound note of hope, with his emphasized vocals. Overall, I am one of the most cold-hearted people out there, and even I can feel a light touch coming out of the screen of my laptop when I hear ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ because Ashcroft pales back his ‘rock god’ style of persona for a new spin on Pop-Punk and Brit-Pop where he feels intimate and learning about the track’s authorized subject use, beyond the obvious associations of drugs or chemicals, can really improve your relatability with it. Chilled yet very somber – ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ is brutal enough to make a grown man cry.

Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Urban Hymns’ (LP) (Released on September 29th, 1997) (via VC/Hut Records)

That’s all for now! Thank you for checking out my latest weekly entry of ‘Scuzz Sundays’ today, and I’ll be back tomorrow to start off the new week as we remember one of the most crucial releases from February as we shortly creep into March. It comes from a Japanese-American songwriter who releases her music on the Dead Oceans label, and The Guardian named her as the “best young songwriter” in the United States when her latest solo album – ‘Laurel Hell’ – was released and quickly entered the top ten chart of the UK, the US, Australia and Ireland earlier in the month.

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