Ant Pile
Dominic Fike from his album Sunburn
The second single from the songwriter’s sophomore album is a cute, coming-of-age song well suited to the American summer. Something we Kiwis are currently nowhere near. Alas, we can pretend we are when listening to the punchy, two-minute track that doubles as a 2000s alt rock homage. Surprisingly more so than its successor track “Think Fast” featuring noughties guitar riff experts Weezer. Ant Pile sees the 27-year-old remembering his schoolyard crushes while growing up in Florida and there’s a nice blend of fun with more intriguingly pensive lyrics.
The Scull of Lucia
Sparklehorse from the forthcoming album Bird Machine
The much-troubled Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse took his own life in 2010 as he worked on a fifth album, the previous four having established him as a cult hero of American indie and man with a gift for Tom Waits-ian fractured pop songs and beautiful fragile tunes. While there was one posthumous release, his collaboration with Danger Mouse on “Dark Night of the Soul” recorded earlier, the unfinished album remained so, until younger brother Matt Linkous and wife Melissa started sifting through the tapes. “The Scull of Lucia” is the first track to be released from Bird Machine, and with its dusty music box sweetness it’s a fittingly funereal return. It’s also an incentive to revisit the Linkous albums – and the 1995 debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is a particularly good place to start.
I Ngooku Moemoeaa
Te Kaahu & Delaney Davidson
Delaney Davidson further advances his plans to sing the low harmony on duets with everyone in Aotearoa music also supplying the lullaby strum to the dreamy voice of Te Kaahu (the waiata nom du plume of Theia) on a song that might just get those Matariki stars twinkling a little brighter.
Sad Waters
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds from their album Your Funeral, My Trial
Nick Cave answers his followers’ questions in his regular Red Hand Files newsletter and he was recently interviewed by Louis Theroux for his podcast series which prompted some who knew nothing about Cave to get in touch and ask the man himself where do we start? Among the newbies was “Aotearoa”, from Wellington who asked: “If I wanted to delve into your back catalogue, can you recommend a chronological list of songs to help me get started?” Cave replied he was the wrong man to ask but he did ponder a few songs he had a soft spot for. That included, “Sad Waters”, a song which starts out by lifting a few lines from country tune “Green, Green Grass of Home”, and which Cave said was the Bad Seeds song he loved the most. “I cried at its slippery beauty when I first played it to my then girlfriend, Elisabeth, as we sat on her bed in Schöneberg, Berlin.”
Express Yourself
Idris Muhammad from his album Black Rhythm Revolution!
New Orleans drummer Idris Muhammad played with everyone from Fats Domino to Sam Cooke to Roberta Flack to George Benson as well as being in the house bands for Prestige Records among others. His first album as band leader was 1970′s Black Rhythm Revolution now reissued on vinyl. As well as giving James Brown’s “Super Bad” a jazz-funk makeover, it opens with this very groovy take on “Express Yourself” by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, the hook of which became the NWA track of the same name.
