Every week, the Listener team shares the tracks that caught our ears and that we think are worth listening to.
Li
By Thomas Powers featuring Chelsea Jade
Powers follows his fellow Naked & Famous frontliner Alisa Xayalith onto a solo excursion with a debut single that’s a sweetly stuttering, synthesiser echo-fest with vocals ping-ponging between Powers and fellow member of Kiwi pop’s Los Angeles colonial outpost, Chelsea Jade. A nicely minimalist arthouse spin on the widescreen stuff that made TNAF famous.
The Rope
by Clementine Valentine from their forthcoming album
Two sisters raised in Hong Kong and the South Island marry their ethereal voices with a classic bout of guitar in a single off their upcoming album The Coin that Broke the Fountain Floor. The ancient aesthetic that comes with throwing coins in fountains isn’t shied away from in the track, embellished with strings and echoing drums. The group formerly known as Purple Pilgrim are set to tour nationally, meaning a real-time offering of the folky track might be just around the corner.
Bug Like an Angel
by Mitski from her forthcoming album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
The enigma that is Mitski returns for her seventh album as introspective as ever. What starts off slow and a highlight of her unique vocal ability is interspersed with gospel choir – lyrically touching on religion, alcoholism and broken promises. Mitski isn’t much for self promotion, announcing the song in a voice note in a newsletter to fans 10 days before its release. The album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We will certainly have some more deep and dramatic stories tucked into it when it releases on September 15.
Visions of You
By Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, featuring Sinéad O’Connor, from the 1991 album Rising Above Bedlam
Trying to find the definitive Sinéad O’Connor duet or collaboration of the many she did in what was sometimes a pinball machine of a musical career involves a very deep and – given her recent death – very sad rabbit hole. She also had a habit of upstaging her hosts, whether it was Simple Minds on stage or being a guest vocalist on an album, then making it her own like she did with Massive Attack’s 100th Window. She also did some nice things to a Pogues’ song with fellow Dubliner Shane MacGowan, and took over the Kate Bush spot on a Peter Gabriel song – doing it live with one-time lover Gabriel, but she then recorded it with Willie Nelson. Oh, and she once sang a Crowded House song live with Neil Finn at a tribute concert for Linda McCartney. But, as the ethereal backing singer on Visions of You, she put her stamp on it while elevating this track by the cult figure bassist who first became known as part of John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols band Public Image Ltd. Released in 1991, Jah Wobble’s album of world music art-funk benefited from O’Connor’s post-breakthrough profile. And, he says, she never sent him a bill for the session.
