Round-up Tracks: Kendrick Lamar, The Kills and More

At this stage it’s simply fact-stating to call Kendrick Lamar one of the greatest rappers in the world. After the meticulous ‘To Pimp A Butterfly,’ last year - a conceptual masterstroke - Lamar has come straight back with an out-of-the-blue album, with no cover, no proper titles, and the tongue in cheek name ‘Untitled Unmastered’. Of course he has.

As a whole, Lamar’s observations are bleaker than ever, and amid the strangely-paced grooves, Terrace Martin sax interludes, and pan-pipe whistles of ‘untitled 03 05.28.13.’ he dissects the corporate money machine fueling the music industry that wants to “put a price on my talent” with typically cutting precision. (El Hunt)

Rejoice! It’s a remarkably temperate Friday afternoon, and The Kills are back! Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince’s fearsome, gnashing bite is unmistakable by now, and ‘Doing It To Death’ hits in all the right places, yet lazes along without a bead of perspiration. The thrashing, rib-shuddering impact is clearly second nature. “We’re double sixing it, night after night,” snarls Alison Mosshart, defying chance, and rolling two dice with six pips each, time after time. With chops this fierce, The Kills don’t need to leave anything to luck. (El Hunt)

Anthony Gonzalez never asked for M83 to take off the way it did. Pop experimentation’s been his mantra for years, but with the flick of a switch, the project went stratospheric. Made in Chelsea ads and clubs the world over were soundtracked by ‘Midnight City’ which, at the time of writing, has a casual 150 million+ streams on Spotify. No big deal.

The response is ‘Do It, Try It’, a dogtastic return that aims for euphoria by ticking new boxes. Goofy house keys, obnoxious vocoder and intentionally tacky disco effects pave the way for M83’s most uncool-sounding track to date, on paper. But even if the intention was to dissaude casual listeners expecting another 24/7 anthem, he’s wound up making another reluctant giant. (Jamie Milton)

“My heart’s in my liver,” exclaims an exceedingly cheery Cate Le Bon “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”. Skipping along the blossom-flecked pavement, hopping over cracks and petrol-puddles with fidgety limbs, ‘Wonderful’ retains all the lyrical eccentricities of the Welsh musician’s last record ‘Mug Museum’ - expressing fairly familar emotions in the most bizarre, cacophonous fashion.

“I wanna be your motion picture film,” declares Cate Le Bon, “I wanna be your ten-pin bowl”. Joyfully bonkers, and nebulously surreal - from the poetic declarations of romance that don’t quite make sense, to Le Bon’s attempts at ‘doing a Thom Yorke’ in the dance-filled video - ‘Wonderful’ revels in its own awkwardness, and does it… well, wonderfully. (El Hunt)

On his ‘Love’s Crushing Diamond’ debut, Mutual Benefit captured the feeling of a naive kid growing up, nothing but close friends and giddy hormones to decide each step. But for every truth delivered, the record was made up of gentle abstractions instead of the direct kick defining ‘Not For Nothing’.

Simple, acoustic-led and about as intimate as music of this kind could possibly get, it finds Jordan Lee cutting to the chase. He sings about being “just a little past the haze,” and as longing string sections close the track, he’s clearly made his point. (Jamie Milton)

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me, but I do, I think I do,” goes the chorus of ‘Your Best American Girl’ - a tipped-open memory box of indecision about a relationship that won’t quite stick, and identities that won’t quite mesh.

Mitski was born in Japan, spending her childhood living across the world, and eventually winding up in Brooklyn. Searching for a place to belong, expectations forever looming overhead like a shadow looking down its nose, lyrically ‘Your Best American Girl’ feels deeply personal to Mitski, and much of it is autobiographical. When Mitski talks of wishing she could be a “big spoon’s little spoon,” though, she’s tapping into a more universal thing. Everyone wants to belong to something.

There’s also a fearsome side to ‘Your Best American Girl’; sacking off the whole idea of squeezing into molds that won’t fit in exchange for something harder, being yourself. Somehow wrenching a gargantuan wash of intense noise out of gentle, rippling chimes, Mitski sounds hungrily ambitious, and more dangerously brilliant than ever before. (El Hunt)

‘Silly Me’’s lead, scratchy acoustic guitar has been picked straight out of a rubbish bin. It’s ragged, untidy, covered in stains. It could only wind up in an early Beck recording - looped and bent into shape - or, in a more modern day example, a Yeasayer song. The Brooklyn experimentalists like to wrestle with unlikely ingredients. New album ‘Amen & Goodbye’ is testament to their smart approach, sometimes too big for its own boots, more often capable of finding pop gold.

This falls into the latter category. That ruffled-hair guitar line soon meets up with heart-stopping drum parts, wild instrumentation and synth lines that give ‘Silly Me’ the shape it so requires. An antidote to slick-as-it-gets posture and a lack of risk-takers, it’s good to have Yeasayer back. (Jamie Milton)

Foggy-headed and nonchalant, the first taste of Yung’s debut album couldn’t be more appropriately titled. Lyrically lamenting modern society’s dependence on those titular tabs of medicine, ‘Pills’ finds Yung fighting back against the numbness.

A borderline out-of-body experience, it’s like a head-rushy hangover that just won’t shift, the attention-demanding screeches of their earlier works giving way to a softened sound. They’re no less disgusted though - “People think the key to sanity in modern day society is pills,” explained frontman Mikkel Holm Silkjær upon the track’s release, that fired-up social commentary still creeping its way into their every move.

“Where were you?” Silkjær drawls at ‘Pills’’ mid-point, demanding something solid amongst all the hazy sentiment. Cloudy though ‘Pills’ might be, Yung still have a remarkable talent for getting straight to the point. (Tom Connick)

Some bands are born in the skies. From the off, INHEAVEN have carried the energy of a group intent on lifting straight off from Planet Earth without a second’s notice. Debut track ‘Regeneration’ could have easily been a lament on feeling numb in a grim, gentrified city, but there was always something more, a realisation that everyday emotions and objects aren’t enough.

To be clear, these four aren’t aliens from another existence, but they’d certainly like onlookers to think as much. In the space of a year, ‘Regeneration’’s effect-drenched vocals have broken through. James Taylor’s unafraid to put his voice upfront on ‘BABY’S ALRIGHT’, delivering politically-charged lines with as much force as possible, because he wants people to hear. He sings about “a mess up place where hate breeds hate,” the target being a war-mongering superpower, but these words could easily be applied to a giant space mission. Given the gusto of ‘BABY’S ALRIGHT’ (and the outstanding pace shift midway through - look out for that), it’s clear INHEAVEN aren’t looking for plaudits. They’re simply clearing the space for their own path before stampeding into the distance. Yes, they’re clearly penning festival anthems in spades and if there was a factory for such a thing, they’d get the best seat in the house, but there’s also a higher calling defining their first steps. This is the monster hit we’ve been waiting for. (Jamie Milton)

Tags: Kendrick Lamar, The Kills, Listen, Features