Aug 20, 2013
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Another Throwback Thursday post here. I can't think of a single song that says "childhood summer circa 2000" more.
- Priyanka
There's music that feels easy to recommend through blog posts. And then there's Jasmine - more suited to frantic rambling in your room after school, sitting on the floor while your mum complains about the volume. Hand claps, a bassline that seems to half-buzz, half-pulse, and Jai Paul's own muted vocals all build to create something weirdly distanced and intimate at the same time. The track does almost sound like it's being played through a neighbour's wall. Only not annoying. Addictive, actually.
Jai Paul on SoundCloud
- Priyanka
Soda Boody & Le1f
James Blake loosely covers his father here, stripping back the original Where to Turn into a song that slowly rolls and crashes through itself. It only felt right posting this on a Sunday.
- Priyanka
Sooner Or Later Shakka
I'm trying to find a more concise playlist title than, "Music that makes you want to drop everything and walk/run somewhere determinedly, or pretend you're in some inspiring montage where you pick yourself up from a low point and do what needs be done, all the while looking incredible and including a lot of looking up at the sky, eyes closed (light rain and confused passers-by optional)." This song would play first.
Shakka released Sooner Or Later as his first single late last year, and has featured on a number of other artists' tracks. Some covers can also be found on his bandcamp.
- Priyanka
I Predict a Graceful Expulsion Cold Specks
Cold Specks released I Predict a Graceful Expulsion as their debut album in May last year. Truth be told, it feels a little odd reviewing it from a London suburb in the middle of summer; singer-songwriter Al Spx, who leads the band, describes her sound as “doom soul”, and the entire album does feel more suited to a January morning somewhere in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. That’s not to say the songs are without warmth though. As haunting as the album feels in places, it seems to be the conviction in Al Spx’s vocals and lyrics more than the images brought to mind from the Hector video.
The instrumentation throughout each song is beautiful, never competing with the power of Al Spx’s voice so much as carrying it through, delivering the almost hymnal lyrics perfectly. Though the piano and horn sections remain as subtle as the finger-picked guitar favoured for the rest of the album, Winter Solstice and When the City Lights Dim are definitely heavier standout tracks. Still, it’s a quiet record. Al Spx pleads, and confesses, and warns, and declares, but even the rawest tracks never feel overwrought.
I Predict a Graceful Expulsion does, admittedly, feel a little repetitive at times, though there’s an honesty to each track making that irrelevant. It has been accused of falling slightly short, which is an understandable criticism at a casual listen. With that said, this is the kind of album that seems bigger than casual listens, subtle as it may be. Even if it takes a while for each and every song to hit you, they do. There's definitely a lot of potential left to be explored, but this doesn't feel like a case of an album falling short so much as taking what it can handle, and saving more for later. Hopefully, that "later" is soon.
8/10 here. This a brilliant performance of Lay Me Down, and a personal favourite one for When the City Lights Dim.
- Priyanka
The second Mary suggested Throwback Thursdays, I was already trying to pick an Aaliyah song to post. I was four when Hot Like Fire was released alongside that all-red video, but her music was played around the house constantly until I was older. I still regularly listen to Aaliyah, but somehow I'd forgotten this song. It doesn't take me back to being four though; more badly choreographed dance routines on playgrounds a few years later, and feeling like I was the coolest person on Earth.
- Priyanka
