Round-up Tracks: Tegan and Sara, GIRLI, & More

DIY writers pick out the biggest and best new songs from the last seven days.

8th April 2016

Good noole, dear readers, and a happy Friday to you all. As usual, its been a busy week of new music, and up to their usual antics, artists have been releasing new songs left right and centre. We’ve picked out the biggest and best new songs to emerge this week, and there’s plenty to get stuck into. Tegan and Sara are teasing the follow-up to 2013’s ‘Heartthrob,’ in pop banger style, GIRLI’s fed up of being called a songstress, and that’s just for starters. In other words, it’s all kicking off. For everything else out this week head over to the DIY Listening Hub, or hit play on our Essential Playlist.

Tegan and Sara - Boyfriend

Cranked-up to the nines synth-bursts, cascading plunks, and a curled-lipped hint of Madonna creeping around in their verse delivery, Tegan and Sara are shooting for the bullseye. Role-flipping is clearly at play in ‘Boyfriend’ – from the fetching dogtooth suits on the artwork, to the decidedly gender-bending lyrics. But with the effortless pizazz that brilliant pop music can muster instantly out of thin air, ‘Boyfriend’ dishes up all of it its conspiratorial subversion with cheerful nonchalance, and a killer chorus to boot. (El Hunt)

Goat - I Sing in Silence

Now well-known for being the barmiest, most colourful performers at whichever festival they choose to rock up to, Goat have returned with something less psychedelic and intense than their usual.

2014’s ‘Commune’ produced the same heady mayhem as their debut ‘World Music’, and with comeback single ‘I Sing In Silence’, the Swedish rabble bring things down significantly. It sits at odds with ‘It’s Time For Fun’, the only other post-‘Commune’ material the band have produced, with less intensity and immediacy.

It’s not all change - Goat still operate in a dream-like world, just in this instance it’s one to sway along to, rather than thrash. (Will Richards)

GIRLI - Girls Get Angry Too

Riding the crimson wave and torching her bra in the space of two seconds, top marks go to GIRLI for writing a song that calls out the godawful practice of labelling every female singer out there a “songstress” (please, just stop with the sassy songstresses already). That’s just one of the topics to come under fire in GIRLI’s bizarrely blooping ‘Girls Get Angry Too’. Amid screaming little high-pitched synthworms, jarring with juddering, squelching plods of bass, everything from Katie Hopkins to creepy pervs lurking in bars get burnt by GIRLI’s rain of venom. This may not be the most measured, refined effort, but deliberately so. With so much bullshit to be angry about in the world right now, who’s got time for cool, calm and collected, anyway? (El Hunt)

Adult Jazz - Eggshells

Adult Jazz aren’t reigning in any of their inner weirdness on new mini-album ‘Earrings Off!’. First single ‘Eggshells’ lurches down a different path to that which the band began on with debut album ‘Gist Is’, with vocals manipulated in every direction and industrial percussion that feels immovable.

By the end of the track, the vocals become almost demonic, taking on a life completely of their own, backed by electronics that become grander and grander, welcoming the slide into weirder and weirder territories - ‘Eggshells’ is the enigmatic next step of a band that continue to refuse to be defined. (Will Richards)

ESTRONS - Drop

Appropriately titled (given it’ll make your jaw drop)’Drop’ is another insight into ESTRONS’ never-slow-down mentality. “Turn off your phone / turn off the tv / turn off your feelings / be more like me,” chants Tali Källström, leading the way towards an instant fix chorus. It’s like being thrown into a carwash headfirst, only to emerge out the other side by landing on a pile of cacti. Spiky, uncompromising, in your face from the get go - this is a wild mission statement to match the very best. (Jamie Milton)

Tags: Girli, Tegan and Sara, Listen, Features