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TALK OF THE TOWN
By Jess B
Given the speculation around the possible subjects of Taylor Swift’s latest album, this by Auckland rapper Jess B is timely. It’s a catchy, understated dismissal of those who mind other people’s business (“bad fish on the line”) and gossip. Another tasty track in advance of her long-overdue and much-anticipated debut album Feels Like Home, due July 5. – Graham Reid
Accelerate
By Molly Payton
The Auckland-born now London-based artist has released a new, well-crafted pop-rock single about throwing caution to the wind despite better judgment, in a fun, you-only-live-once kind of way. Or, more articulately, Payton describes it as a “f--- everything” song. The gritty guitars matched with softer vocals lean themselves toward the likes of brit alt-pop star beabadoobee, meaning they’ll feel perfectly at home throughout Payton’s UK-Europe tour come August. – Alana Rae
Kātuarehe
By Anna Coddington
Instantly enjoyable Prince-influenced bilingual funk that slips effortlessly between te reo Māori and English with a big bassline and chorus effortlessly tailored for radio and dancefloors. Very impressive taster for a forthcoming album. – Graham Reid
Big Time Nothing
By St. Vincent
Annie Clark’s seventh album, All Born Screaming, is just out, with this slab of Prince-esque electro funk, co-written with Cate Le Bon, quite the perky party invite to the squelchy, squealy, high-drama, art-pop within. – Russell Baillie
The Bolter
By Taylor Swift
Down toward the bottom at track 29, Swift’s folk tale, allegedly referencing Edwardian-era socialite Idina Sackville, is a calming, cleverly simplistic highlight among the chaos of The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. The National’s Aaron Dessner brings his stripped-back production to the song that gets the balance of intelligent lyricism and pleasing melodies.
Swift weaves together the story of the young girl surviving falling through ice as a child, who gets the same rush as she makes her way through husbands later in life – “it felt like the time/she fell through the ice/and came out alive”. It’s no secret media outlets have scrutinised Swift’s dating history and quantity over her career. Hearing her note similar examples of such ridicule in history is a point and laugh at said outlets for their unoriginality, but also illustrates how she truly feels about it all, which is always a win with fans. – Alana Rae
Dumb Luck
by Tom Lark
Tom Lark (Shannon Fowler) had a good 2023: his acclaimed Brave Star album saw him nominated for the recent Taite Music Prize and the forthcoming AMAs (folk category). It was also in the Listener’s best of the year countdown. Here again, he delivers his country-folk pop with a comfortable languor and smart self-production that captures a mood between deep thoughtfulness and couldn’t care. “I’ve seen dumb luck come and go, then come back with a golden glow.” True. A slow grower. – Graham Reid
Well Alright
by Johnny Cash
As the first single from the forthcoming album Songwriter (unreleased Cash songs from the 90s polished up by Marty Stuart, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and others), Well Alright – the mundane tale of meeting a woman in a laundromat – is hardly promising. But it’s a reminder that the legendary Man in Black who recorded Nine Inch Nails’ bleak Hurt also once did The Chicken in Black, so … . – Graham Reid
Vítězslava Kaprálová, String Quartet Op.8, II Lento
By Kapralova Quartet
If she’d lived long enough, the Czech composer/conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová might have made an opera of her own biography. Her mother was a trained vocal coach, her father a composer, pianist and music teacher who had studied with Janáček. Kaprálová trained in Brno, Prague, and finally Paris, where she came into the orbit of Bohuslav Martinů, 24 years her senior and married. The pair became friends, lovers, and, it is said, soulmates, and while Martinů mentored Kaprálová, there is little of his influence in her music (on the other hand, letters show that Martinů wrote one of his masterpieces, the Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani in a state of fevered love for Kaprálová).
Kaprálová's own music is original and, as this string quartet from 1935-36 shows, often beautiful. Separated from Martinů by the war, she married the writer Jiří Mucha in 1940. Within two months, Kaprálová was dead, from either TB or typhoid (opinions differ). She was just 25. – Richard Betts
