A week away means there’s a glut of music to share, so I’ll expand this a little bit this week. Oh, and there’s an absolute monster track that appeared last night that will wrap this up.
“Cali” – Ride. Ride’s comeback album, Weather Diaries, was released nearly a year ago now. At the time I was a little more enamored with Slowdive’s comeback disk. This song popped up in my Discover playlist recently and I’ve fallen in love with it. A great spring song, now that spring may finally be coming.
“Sure” – Hatchie. Another track I missed when it was first released last fall. And another most excellent track from an Australian artist. Seriously, the Aussies are coming at us hard these days. There’s a lot of Cocteau Twins in this song.
“Plastic Soul” – Mondo Cozmo. Mondo’s songs have been bouncing around on Sirius for awhile. I gave his album a listen last week and ended up really liking a few of the songs. This one has a trippy, mid-90s feel to it.
“Believe” – Amen Dunes. I’ve really been digging AD’s new album, Freedom. It’s got a good, mellow, contemplative vibe.
“Best Friends” – Little Dragon. They rarely go wrong. This one is another absolute treat.
“Pynk” – Janelle Monáe featuring Grimes. About a year ago, after HAIM released their first couple singles for the new album, I suggested the summer of ’17 would be the summer of HAIM. That ended up being a dud, as the album did not live up to expectations. I’ll try again: the summer of 2018 will be Ms. Monáe’s. Another utterly perfect track. One more week until we get to hear the whole thing.
“Nothing Compares 2 U” – Prince. HOLY SHIT!!!! There have been live versions of this song out forever; Prince even included one on his mid-90s greatest hits collection. But Michael Howe, who has been tasked with going through Prince’s mythical vault of unreleased recordings, recently found this, Prince’s only studio recording of the song he wrote, passed onto his protege group The Family, and was eventually made legendary by Sinead O’Connor. The story behind the song is Prince went into a studio with a notebook, started writing and recording, and an hour later most of the song as we hear it here was complete. Speaking of legendary…
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of Prince’s death and this is a fine way to honor his legacy and memory. And this video! Even if the song sucked I could be mesmerized by the footage of Prince and his band rehearsing their moves for literally days.