Another week, another chance to dive headfirst into the depths of New Music Friday.
Before you clock off and and crack a cold one, we’ve rounded up the best new music releases to land across Aus and the rest of the world this week.
Rainbow Chan turns ancestral tradition into one of the week’s most ambitious releases, Yung Lean steps into Robyn’s world, and Claud finding something worth raising a beer to.
Closer to home, Holly Throsby, Azure Ryder, Grace Robinson, The Vernons and Arnhem Land punks Mertas all have something new in the pile.
Here’s what’s spinning.
Claud — ‘She Doesn’t Love Me’
Claud is back, and apparently America is the toxic girlfriend.
‘She Doesn’t Love Me’ introduces the Chicago-raised, Brooklyn-based songwriter’s third album Me and the Music, due October 23 through Dead Oceans. On the surface it plays like an unrequited love song; dig slightly deeper and the person doing the ghosting is the United States.
The accompanying video brings the idea home with a bar full of familiar faces, including Clairo, Samia and Annie DiRusso.
Yung Lean — ‘Robotboy’
Yung Lean covering Robyn makes an almost suspicious amount of sense. The Stockholm artist has reimagined Robyn’s 2005 track ‘Robotboy’, with original collaborator Klas Åhlund producing.
Robyn herself encouraged the interpretation, describing the song as feeling almost made for Lean. Twenty-one years after the original arrived, ‘Robotboy’ still sounds wonderfully lonely.
Rainbow Chan — The Bridal Lament
Rainbow Chan’s third album The Bridal Lament arrives via Music In Exile, and there’s a huge amount happening inside it.
The 14-track record draws from the bridal lament traditions of the Weitou people, the first settlers of Hong Kong and Chan’s own ancestors, reimagining the historical practice of brides singing and publicly mourning before leaving their families.
Originally developed through Chan’s theatrical work, the project now lands somewhere between experimental pop and oral history, welcome to Rainbow Chan’s universe.
Jungle — Sunshine
Jungle have always understood that the line between sophisticated and ridiculously fun is thinner than people make it out to be. Their new album Sunshine lives right there.
Across 11 tracks, J Lloyd, Tom McFarland and newly official member Lydia Kitto stretch the group’s soul, disco, hip-hop and electronic foundations into something warmer and more open.
The band describe Sunshine less as actual weather and more as “a place you carry around in your mind.” If you have approximately three hours spare – this could make for a very good afternoon.
Holly Throsby — ‘Missing You’
Holly Throsby wrote ‘Missing You’ on a Tuesday and recorded it on the Friday, which explains some of the restless energy running underneath it.
The latest single from her forthcoming sixth album Normal Magic moves in 6/8, giving the whole thing the slightly breathless sensation Throsby describes as trying to run forward while somebody is holding onto the back of your shirt.
“Desperate, in a beautiful way,” is her description. That pretty much nails it. Normal Magic arrives September 4, with an East Coast tour following across October and November.
Azure Ryder — ‘Pipe Dream of California’
California has sold a lot of people the same dream over the years. Azure Ryder’s latest single is about realising geography can only do so much.
‘Pipe Dream of California’ traces Ryder heading towards the mythical land of reinvention before working out that whatever she was searching for had followed her there. Big dreams, self-belief and the irritating discovery that you still have to live inside your own head wherever you move.
It’s another glimpse at Ryder’s debut album Even Flowers Can Bruise, arriving September 25.
Grace Robinson — ‘is it over?’
Grace Robinson’s ‘is it over?’ is heavier territory, both musically and otherwise.
The Naarm singer-songwriter’s latest single deals with the persistence of body dysmorphia and the uncomfortable realisation that healing doesn’t always mean a thought disappears completely. Sometimes you just become better equipped to recognise it and keep moving.
It follows ‘harder than you think’ and arrives alongside news of Robinson’s debut album choppy, due November 13 via AWAL Recordings.
Mertas — ‘CC’
Finally, an anthem for anybody who has ever received an email beginning “just following up”.
Arnhem Land punk quartet Mertas turn workplace inbox hell into ‘CC’, a scrappy blast about the strange passive aggression of professional correspondence, where every “kind regards” has the potential to feel like a threat.
There’s humour in it, but also some very recognisable rage, and heads up, there is a C-bomb.
The band are heading down from the NT to Brisbane for BIGSOUND in September, which is one hell of a commute, so if you’re in the Valley, make sure you catch them at Tomcat Bar on Tuesday, September 1 from 11:30pm, or Ric’s Backyard on Thursday, September 3 from 9:15pm.
The Vernons — Strike Out Again
Gold Coast rockers The Vernons return after three years with Strike Out Again, a nine-track album that apparently wasn’t meant to be an album at all.
Recorded in Brisbane with producer and engineer Matt Stewart, the record grew from a loose collection of demos before eventually turning into something bigger, led by previous singles ‘Don’t Give A Damn If You Don’t Believe Me’ and ‘Nightmare’.
There’s an appealing lack of overthinking to the story. Sometimes you start recording a few ideas, follow the good ones, and discover you’ve accidentally made the next record.
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