Round-up Tracks: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Panic! At The Disco, & More

Never strangers when it comes to a bit of bombast, Panic! At The Disco have made a firm return to theatrics with their latest musical offering. From the stomping chant of the chorus to the gospel choir outro, the opening funky drum solo to the spoken word introduction, ‘Hallelujah’ is a fully formed Panic! Anthem that has jazz-hands-in-the-air written all over it.

Melding together the familiar bright brass sections of ‘Pretty. Odd’ with the baroque feel of their debut - while throwing in a few classic R’n’B tendencies for good measure - it’s an infectious declaration. Brendon Urie may now technically be the only one of the original band members left (this is, after all, the first track to be unveiled after the departure of drummer Spencer Smith) but if ‘Hallelujah’ is a sign of what’s set to come next, it’s going to do the band’s back catalogue proud. (Sarah Jamieson)

You’ll need your attention and maracas to hand for this new cut from UMO’s upcoming album ‘Multi-Love’: before you know it, you’ve moved from fifteen seconds of drab, melancholy brass into a world of sun-flecked funk and irresistible Latin beats. “We eat crickets in the future,” Ruban Nielson murmurs loosely, “drink Chicha in the jungle”. There’s definitely something of the cicada to the hectic drum track – but the elliptical lyrics aren’t just about the tropics.

As the title suggests, it’s all about connectedness, in quite a different way from another knockout phone-related single – Ariel Pink’s ‘Put Your Number In My Phone’. Here, the caller on the domestic end of the line is disinterested and unimpressed by cricket-eating, Chicha-swilling exploits abroad: “That sounds great, I’m kinda busy, could you call back again? I’m sure you’ll come back, till then I can’t keep checking my phone.” That may sound harsh, but there’s no bad guy, really – just technology’s power to connect, and the paradoxical disconnectedness that results. Bet you weren’t expecting that insight to arrive in the form of a psychedelic, synthy samba. (Larry Bartleet)

There’s no way to put it more eloquently; The Chemical Brothers’ return is absolutely mullered off its face. Compared with the strain of insanity that colours the duo’s earlier material - take spoken-word weird-fest ‘The Salmon Dance’ and the Najat Aatabou-sampling banger ‘Galvanise’ as prime examples - ‘Sometimes I Feel So Deserted’ chases a far sweatier, floor-stomping high, intensively focused around a relentless, stomping beat.

If their first preview is anything to go by, it looks like The Chemical Brothers are busy drawing on the massive aesthetics of their 90s classic records ‘Exit Planet Dust’, and ‘Dig Your Own Hole,’ for their next album ‘Born In The Echoes’. The spacey, cavernous all-coddling enormity of ‘Sometimes I Feel So Deserted’ might be the last one standing on the dancefloor, but it needs no accompaniment. Once again Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are back. (El Hunt)

HEALTH are a force. Known for their chainsaw-guitaring, all-over-the-place idiosyncratic song structuring, HEALTH have worked with everyone from Crystal Castles to Pictureplane, via remixes of rappers like Gucci Mane. It’s this electronic influence that informs ‘New Coke’, a startling banger that’s worlds away from the likes of ‘Crimewave’, and its reverb heavy drum sound.

This is stark, yet glistening. With hi-hats that sound like machine gun fire, there’s a knowingly frantic sound. “Let the bombs explode” is sung so casually - laconically even - over brassy synths and tribal snare, and like Fuck Buttons on ketamin, it’s propelled by Death Grips-esque production, and careers wildly from relative calm to utter panic. This is a nightmare over two minutes; urgent and screaming with flicked spit and neck veins like ropes. This, fundamentally, is HEALTH at their most frenetic, which is an achievement in itself. (Euan L. Davidson)

In the short time following Zane Lowe’s final Hottest Record endorsement, The Japanese House – aka Amber Bain - has garnered such attention that the forthcoming debut EP feels like one from an established name rather than a mystic London teenager. Latest cut ‘Sister’ - the final track from the EP to be aired - shows Bain at her barest. With the sometimes swampy or shattering interjections of previous tracks left to one side, it’s the vocals that take up centre stage on this serene showcase.

Its thirty-second prelude a shy yet knowing enticement, it’s an opening that shimmers like a secret invitation through a hidden doorway. Once you’re in, there’s no escaping, as the tender progressions swell; reserved yet undeniably absorbing. Though ‘Sister’ produces gentle washes rather than fully-fledged waves, it still sounds blissful as Bain’s intense accounts float above the haze. It’s a wonder that something this sparse can also be so exhaustingly gripping, but the balance of turmoil and tranquillity that’s put forward on ‘Sister’ is so human it’s difficult to not be tied down by it. (Liam McNeilly)

Right now there are few voices in music as distinctive as Courtney Barnett’s. She paints her vivid pictures with twanging, Aussie-flavoured spoken-word paints, and her delivery is so casual - bordering at times on flippant - that it’s easy to miss the meticulous constructions and language-quirks at almost every turn. In contrast to the playfulness of much of her debut, and drawing out the most melancholy elements of its A-Side ‘Kim’s Caravan,’ Barnett’s cover of John Cale’s ‘Close Watch’ shows her unmistakable voice in a different light.

The Velvet Underground’s influence has always been hovering in the background of Courtney Barnett’s music, and though she’s by no means indebted to them at all, flickers of ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’ or ‘The Gift’ register as touchstones in her own kaleidoscopic slabs of rock. It’s easy to see why she chose to cover John Cale’s ‘Close Watch’ for her Record Store Day B-Side, then, and she finds a perfect fit.

Stripping back Cale’s ballad-epic pianos, and tracing more fragile melody lines instead, when Courtney Barnett sings “I can’t live without you, any way at all,’ she sounds like she really means it. This is Barnett at her most arresting, treading ever-further down melancholy street. (El Hunt)

Tags: Panic At The Disco, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Listen, Features