Features Tracks: St Vincent, Lorde, & More

Today is a pretty bad day - on the superstitious calendar anyway. Everywhere else, Friday 13th caps off an absolutely manic week of exciting returns, tantalising album offcuts, and mighty releases from the rising stars glinting in the horizon of next year. The DIY writers have left no stone unturned, and here is the resulting round-up of tracks you need to get unwrapping.

St Vincent - Birth In Reverse

“Oh what an ordinary day,” lulls Annie Clark through layers of distortion, “take out the garbage, masturbate.” The strangely titled ‘Birth In Reverse’ is full of St Vincent’s biggest lyrical influences – you can hear Joan Didion’s Maria giving her slightly unhinged “report from the edge”, and heaven knows, in sinister Tender Is The Night fashion, what exactly she saw through the blinds. While everyone else is busy writing lists rounding up this year, St Vincent is focused on next year, and on the strength of this wonky, messed-up groove and wonderfully weird lyricism alone, it looks like 2014 is going to be all about her. (El Hunt)

Burial - Come Down To Us

The 13-minute closer on Burial’s ‘Rival Dealer’ EP could go on and on. It uncovers so many layers, so many new truths that it’s like a revelatory book turning its own pages right in front of you. First off: The final, vocal sample/speech of a transgender person - taken from a 2012 Human Rights Campaign film - shouldn’t be the ultimate talking point. The very appeal of Burial is that even based on so few details and information about his character and his intent, he still reveals a personality through his music. This has always been the case. Even prior to the standout closing sample, there’s a warmth, a deadly beauty that manifests itself in ‘Come Down To Us’.

Twinkling, spacious synths link arms with the most oddly beautiful use of vocal snippets since anything on ‘Untrue’. The piece reaches glimmering peaks before collapsing due to the weight of abstract noise, two times over. Motivational spoken word clips - ‘Don’t be afraid to step into the unknown’ - enter the frame, but beneath the hope is an ominous tone, a fear in the action of exposing a truth. It sums up the anxiety that comes with honesty, the risk that arrives in a projection of self. (Jamie Milton)

Lorde - No Better

I’m touching wood as I write so that a rogue pigeon won’t avenge my optimism by pooping on my head, but it’s been a pretty great Friday the 13th so far, hasn’t it? The Queen B has suddenly released an album - there’s a collab with Blue Ivy and everything. Keen not to be out-done (or maybe she didn’t know like the rest of us) Lorde has released this standalone offcut from her ‘Pure Heroine’ debut. It’s a sugar-sweet, snappy, confident remedy to ease us out of those summer ‘hits’ with open top car montage videos. Lorde’s dreaming of snuggling up in the winter, and you can’t get ‘No Better’ than that really. (El Hunt)

Twin Peaks - Flavour/Come Bother Me

Expect Twin Peaks to be one of the breakout successes of 2014. They might’ve released their ‘Sunken’ debut earlier this year, but on the basis of quick follow-up single ‘Flavor’/’Come Bother Me’, they’re digesting rock’n’roll staples and transferring them into ragged new ideas faster than anyone can keep up. The first half in particular offers up a Jagger-endorsed strut, confidently streaming through growling vocals and Stones-channelling riffage. Scuzz never sounded so fresh. (Jamie Milton)

Tripp Single by Twin Peaks

Fever Dream- Flux

Shoegazers/noise-poppers extraordinaires Fever Dream have been a bit quiet of late, ever since releasing their (inecendiary and really rather good) debut EP last year. Until earlier this year, at least, when they popped up on the Oddbox Records singles club with a cracking new offering. There’s now a video to accompany part of it in the shape of ‘Flux’, which shows the band’s more melodic, pop-orientated side to cracking effect. They remain, in all their noise-making glory - a bunch to keep an eye on in the future. (Gareth Ware)

Bombay Bicycle Club - It’s Alright Now

In the run-up to ‘A Different Kind of Fix’, Bombay Bicycle Club spoke a lot about electronic influences, and they were clear on offerings like ‘Shuffle’. It looks like that’s a direction the Crouch End boys want to carry on with, because ‘It’s Alright Now’ is suspended on cleverly jumbled vocal samples and string parts that loop around the place like an eager toddler orbiting the Christmas tree in a pair of festive dungarees. This new preview feels like a progression for Bombay Bicycle Club. People complain that there are no younger bands ready to headline festivals. This might just prove all those people a little bit wrong. (El Hunt)

Kaiser Chiefs - Misery Company

Never a band famous for quiet songs, Kaiser Chiefs have created nothing less than a proper stomper. With ‘Misery Company’, a taster of their fifth album ‘Education, Education, Education & War’, which is due to be released end of March 2014, they’ve put the quintessence of what makes them one of Britain’s finest live bands into one song: combine an irresistibly driving beat with two brilliant guitar solos, some retro keyboards and clever lyrics. Add a surrealistically catchy chorus full of maniac laughs, performed by singer Ricky Wilson with a ton of attitude, and you have a song so thoroughly British, you’d

never guess it was recorded over the pond . It’s mixed by Michael Brauer in New York’s Electric Lady Studios, who has managed to make them sound moreunadulterated than ever. As Wilson put it: “not many bands get the chance to make their first record for the second time”. Kaiser Chiefs have taken that and are back keener and more exciting than ever. (Dani Beck)

Eagulls- Tough Luck

Eagulls have long since expertly crafted songs that been part explosive, propulsive indie rock juggernaut and part Begbie-in-Trainspotting death stare, all equal parts excitement and terror. Latest offering ‘Tough Luck’ is no different, clattering along relentlessly and mercilessly like the bastard son of Gang Of Four and The Cure. On this evidence, next year’s album and attendant tour is going to be something very. very special indeed. Get clearing your diaries. (Gareth Ware)

Young Fathers - War

Sometimes listening to Young Fathers is like an actual battle, a clash between the natural senses and plain common sense. The abrasive quality lures you in, the curious, often non-sensical lyrics even more so. But it’s harsh to the point of explosion, like approaching a caged animal that could, feasibly, claw out from behind the bars. ‘War’ is Young Fathers epitomised; odd, eerie elements forming into something actually quite palatable, easy on the ears if ever there was such a thing for Young Fathers. The Edinburgh force continue to dazzle, stir in mysterious ways - whether they’ll ‘Settle’ on new album ‘DEAD’ anyone’s guess. Chances are they’re attempting to do the exact opposite. (Jamie Milton)

Yung Lean - Kyoto

The strangely delayed appreciation of 808s & Heartbreak in the hip-hop underground is appreciated, if still a little questioned. The Swedish Yung Lean and his bizarre Sadboyz clique have begun a new cult movement, not dissimilar to that of Lil B’s, but considerably sillier. In a deadpan devotion to his craft, there’s something inherently clever about his ‘dumb’ music. Possibly a weird in-joke or an incredibly elaborate attempt at trolling, Lean’s music has an oddly endearing quality to it. As the first single from the upcoming ‘Unknown Memory’, ‘Kyoto’ shows that he won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Continuing his emotionally ignorant slur-rap over Yung Gud’s phenomenal production, ‘Kyoto’ is bound to provoke mumble-alongs similar to those found on his debut mixtape. Proving that his ‘empire of emotion’ is a place worth visiting, Lean remains one of the most captivating figures in the hip-hop underground. (Joe Price)

DJ Bronson - Loser Hill

Anyone with a decent memory will remember the flux of mash-ups that started coming out in the middle of the last decade. Strokes vs Christina Aguilera! Green Day vs The Timelords! You get the picture. Into the breach steps a new contender that deserves greater recognition - that of Beck’s ‘Loser’ vs the Grange Hill theme. Oh yes. That DJ Bronson’s done an expert job melding these two unlikeliest of bedfellows into something pretty bloody brilliant. (Gareth Ware)

Versa - Neon

Surfacing from the smouldering ashes of their former project and abandoning the distortion-laden guitars that were its centrepiece, VERSA have slickly declared their rebirth with the Hitchcock-inspired slow burner ‘Neon’, self-produced by the band’s musical instigator Blake Harnage. Oozing with a melancholy-fuelled air of theatricality that wouldn’t feel aloof in a spy film, frontwoman Sierra Kay’s silky and alluring vocals are bathed within an inter-twining mixture of futuristic synth surges that gradually intensify as the track reaches its industrial-tinged summit. Lyrically, the destructive nature of ‘Neon’ is supplemented to an eerie perfection, with the resounding cry of “I flirt with disaster” expanding its goth pop tendencies to the very optimum. The dark tidings of insatiable lust have never been more gratifying. (Josh Pauley)