Round-up Tracks: DIIV, Thom Yorke & More

For a band that seems to be either navigating or stirring up a shit storm at any given moment, DIIV have a right knack for creating serenity when Zach Cole Smith puts his ideas down on record. It’s been over three years since debut LP ‘Oshin’ hit the shelves, so it’s with great collective relief that the music can once again be the point of attention when it comes to talking about this band.

‘Dopamine’ starts working its magic from the get go, with the kind of immediacy that you’d expect from a DIIV track; subtle, shimmering melodies glowing as they intertwine around one another. It’s a track that just keeps growing, creating what feels like its own magnetic field as it unravels, before the neurotransmitters lock in to overdrive for the track’s final minute. It has everything you know and love, but there’s more nous on show here. With the track given more time to breathe, its bigger moments overrun the senses like never before. What’s more, Smith sounds as comfortable as he ever has in a vocal booth, laid-back as he sings “I got so high, I finally felt like myself”. It lays the foundations for a record that promises to say much much more than previous works. Still no idea what the hell forthcoming new album ‘Is The Is Are’ might be all about, but ‘Dopamine’ will make you all the more the desperate to find out. (Liam McNeilly)

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has plenty other things to be getting on with (ahem), but new solo track ‘Villian’ is a sign that he’s still a master of darkness. Without even providing his own vocal, Yorke instead opts for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus’ chants to give the song a creepy draw. Things turn stranger when midway through the eight-minute number, scattered beats begin to throw shapes. They feel entirely out of place on what’ll likely go down as one of Yorke’s most forgettable tracks. Still, extract fragments out of this and you might find a pointer towards Radiohead’s LP9. Anything Yorke currently produces is getting lapped up like gold dust. (Jamie Milton)

When Ryan Adams told everybody he was making a ‘1989’ cover album, eyebrows rightly raised a few notches. He’s never been one to take things too seriously, after all; he once paid a fan 30 bucks to leave his show after they requested a Bryan Adams song, and he also appeared on Songwriter’s Circle while distracted by an eBay t-shirt auction. Still, with an actual release date now penciled in for next Monday (21st September) and the first single aired, it doesn’t get much more official than this. Ryan Adams isn’t kidding this time around.

Turning away from the trilling, stamping ‘don’t mess with our squad’ angle of Swifty’s original, Ryan Adams’ version of ‘Bad Blood’ - the first preview of his ‘1989’ cover album - takes a more regretful, saddened tact. Instead of booting his rivals out of skyscraper windows, Adams mournfully opens with “did you have to do this? I was thinking that you could be trusted,” over noodling guitar, and all of a sudden, it’s less triumphant, and more heartbroken. (El Hunt)

If Justin Vernon returned to his famed wood cabin - the home of his Bon Iver debut - with a bottle of prosecco and a few poppers, he’d sound like this. As The Japanese House, Amber Bain uses the same core ingredients as Vernon - multi-layered vocals and clipped guitar notes. But on ‘Cool Blue’, for the first time she spins her wistful experimentation into an instant fix of a pop track. Never static, it’s a playful song about being haunted - “up every night / the phantom of myself beside” - that refuses to give into the demons. The Japanese House’s most magical moment so far. (Jamie Milton)

Every cloud has a silver lining; at least, that’s what the people in charge of making up all those idioms will tell you. TRAAMS, it turns out, have a ‘Silver Lining,’ too, and theirs is a ferociously bass-heavy, slightly jittery, nickel-plated storm of intoxicating vapour. Paced like silly putty, the drums - even when they’re trying to race forward with the fuzz-covered guitars - have a careful restraint, and all the while frontman Stuart Hopkins asks “how long, how long,” like an impatient small child on a family roadtrip to Legoland. With their second album ‘Modern Dancing’ - produced by Hookworms’ MJ - on the way, here’s a TRAAM worth boarding. (El Hunt)

Truly, Trudy belong in the hearts of thousands. Their barmy, bustling take on garage rock is sinister, but it packs a warm heart. There’s something in ‘Behave’ - produced by Spring King’s Tarek Musa - that pits it in the midst of an Eastenders brawl and a boozy, loved-up weekend by the Eiffel Tower. Honestly, if all the bravado was stripped away for a second, Trudy could be penning pop hitz for Olly Murs. Instead, they turn attention to a gravelly, rough-edged kind of seduction. There’s plenty more where that came from. They describe themselves as the “kids that pop your cotton socks off” - long live these jumped-up newcomers. (Jamie Milton)

Tags: DIIV, Thom Yorke, Listen, Features