News Tracks: Wolf Alice, Peace & More

So many tracks, and so little precious time. With this dilemma in mind, the scribes of DIY have assembled, compared notes, and come up with this marauder’s map of new musical goodies. Have a listen to all this week’s splendorous selections, and get the definitive review verdict at the same time. Kapeesh?

Wolf Alice – Storms

Named after an Angela Carter story, Wolf Alice have always been ones for taking a sickly sweet fairytale and making it all dark, dank and grungey. Like a feral Red Riding Hood bashing her pursuer over the head with a reverb pedal, ‘Storms’ coyly suggests ‘fight me?”, whilst smirking at the sight of the bambozed wolf running slap-bang into a low-register wall of bassy sound. Between first demo ‘Leaving You’ and the outstanding ‘Blush’ EP, Wolf Alice have more than proven their raw talent and versatility as a young band still experimenting with various threads. In their latest material, though, Wolf Alice unearth an exciting, self-assured, and fully cohesive sound. (El Hunt)

Peace – Money

Topically, it’s an anti-ode to Amazon, Starbucks, Chris Moyles and Jimmy Carr, turning capitalism into a capital offence through sheer pop-panache, a cutting guitar riff and venomous lyrics (‘Welcome to a world/where Bitcoins pay for beatings/and diamonds pay for girls’). It’s a lean and mean, sharp-suited, freshly-cut, tailor-made hook machine, bursting with a new sense of pop knowhow and lyrical urgency. Following on from last single ‘World Pleasure’, it’s also been injected with a disco syrup in the form of a snappy funk-falsetto breakdown that’s bang on the, err, money. It’s a call to have a cheeky dance, belt-out an anthemic chorus and argue tendentiously for the evils of our pseudo-mercantilist society over the next family game of Monopoly. Screw The Wolf of Wall Street. Stuff stupid pieces of printed paper. To hell with tax evasion, expenses scandals, bankers bonuses, money laundering and offshore accounts. Instead, have a listen to B-town boys Peace’s new track ‘Money’. (Kyle MacNeill)

Velvet Morning – Barrett Land

‘Barrett Land’ is the latest track from Velvet Morning – the self-coined ‘smooth psychedelia’ project of 19 year old singer songwriter Samuel Jones; a term which completely captures the languid aesthetic running throughout his tracks. From the off, ‘Barrett Land’ is perfect complimentary listening for this woozy transition into summer; the loping, melodic guitar jangle sounds like the start of a Mac Demarco track-gone-slow-mo, whilst the washed-out, whispery croons sit at the epicentre of a dense, reverb-fuelled soundscape, creating a kind of dream-pop Vs psychedelia. Rather than channeling these sounds into some monumental crescendo, Jones seems to let the textures gently spill and sprawl over one another, only overridden by a few bassy tweaks and twangs, the odd seagull call (he hails from Leigh-on-Sea) and some eerie, fuzzed-out spoken word drawls towards the end. This is perfectly executed, smooth psychedelia for the dreamers. (Laura Eley)

Lana Del Rey – West Coast

Out with the gangster Nancy Sinatra, in with a road-tripping, desert dwelling new individual - Lana Del Rey v.2.0 is here. Or maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. On ‘West Coast’ she slows things down, adds smoke and dust to an already misty routine. There’s no great switcharound or giant curveball. This is a resurrection of ‘Born to Die’, in a sense. It’s woozier, more strung out. Dan Auerbach’s production is distinctly Black Keys, lending an old school rock aesthetic to the track. What ‘West Coast’ is lacking in great revolutionary ideas, it makes up for in giving an already nostalgic sound a new lease of life. It’s an ultra-moody return, built brick-by-brick with true grit. (Jamie Milton)

ZHU - Paradise Awaits

There have been a fair few scandals and speculations involving creators of bloopy-smooth dance music as of late, so we may be forgiven for needing a quick recap on ZHU. A mysterious LA-based producer wiped his social media feeds slate-clean, right before an unclaimed song titled ‘Moves Like Ms. Jackson’ found its way onto the internet. Disclosure rumours ran rife, the blog-sleuths initiated investigations, and before long the man responsible was framed as a guy called Steve Zhu. Nobody seems to know much about him, apart from that he’s an expert at playing the anonymity internet game. With such hype-mongering chops, ZHU really needed to get on with it and show some bang for his buck, and following on from a chain of several promising releases, ‘Paradise Awaits’ does the trick. In restless fidgeting style, it sounds bound for the airwaves come summer, and this shadowey artist looks like one to keep an eye on, too. (El Hunt)

Hundred Waters - Xtalk

Whether they’re bathing next to streams of the stuff or chemically creating it, Hundred Waters have a habit of finding beauty where others can’t. Their music has always been delicate to the bone, breakable to the tiniest degree. On ‘Xtalk’, though, everything sounds like it’s being extracted straight out of a mind-altering paradise. Vocals and electronics come from the same world, each note ringing out with purity and the slight hint of pain. It’s a sad sounding song, is ‘Xtalk’, like a dream that ends too soon. Skrillex has probably had it on repeat all week, ahead of releasing it as part of the band’s new album on label OWLSA. (Jamie Milton)

Happyness - Great Minds Think Alike, All Brains Taste The Same

South London trio Happyness are gearing up to release debut album ‘Weird Little Birthday’ in June, and the first cut ‘Great Minds Think Alike, All Brains Taste The Same’ is an appetite-whetting taster. Following their self-titled EP earlier this year - a concoction of woozy, shoe-gazy lullabies, wispy vocals and jangly guitars which strongly hinted at influences like Sparklehorse, Wilco and Yo La Tengo - this latest track oozes the same kind of American indie- band vibe with their charmingly odd lyricism (dogs and birthdays are recurring themes) and lax guitar parts. With a buoyant, sunny rhythm, dual vocals which seamlessly bounce off each other, and an infectious ‘oohing’ chorus that’ll be stuck in minds and brains everywhere, this two minute jangle is a brilliantly concocted tease to what is set to be one of 2014’s best albums so far. (Laura Eley)

Girl Band - The Cha Cha Cha

As blink-and-you-missed-it as they come, ‘The Cha Cha Cha’ does an awful lot in 25 seconds of stage time. In one finite blow, it sums up the bratty audaciousness of Girl Band, progressing from hopeless wail to formidable crunch in breathless distortion. Unlike almost every other song of theirs, this time the Dublin group cut things off right at the very moment it threatens to explode. Usually they like to sit back and view the apocalypse with a front row seat. (Jamie Milton)

Tapestry - Balcony Anthem

Leicester’s Tapestry are a playful bunch; they are the type of lads who play a house party then instead of engaging in rock n’ roll abandon; you’ll find them getting drunk and getting deep with the hardcore music fans about their love for Timberland’s production techniques. ‘Balcony Anthem’ in particular fidgets it’s way into your ears complete with whistles, squelches, crunches and all manner of dance-y sounds and the lead vocal every so often gets warped without warning. This is what makes Tapestry so interesting to listen to; their short-attention spans make for greatly engaging music. (Jack Parker)

Vacationer - The Wild Life

Pop-punk nostalgists might be aware that Kenny Vasoli once penned a track with his initial muse The Starting Line that detailed lofty ambitions to float away to a desert island. If his Beach House-influenced project Vacationer’s latest offering ‘The Wild Life’ is anything to go by, there’s a damn good chance he might’ve managed to do it – or at least booked a holiday break to somewhere with plenty of sun, sand-swept beaches and maybe a Tom Hanks lookalike. A jaunty number that fervently captures the essence of carpe diem lyrically, ‘The Wild Life’ comes dressed up in the musical equivalent of the Hawaiian shirt - a menagerie of percussive tropical rhythms that give way to the kind of contagious choral chanting that fuels late night campfire sing-alongs. A contender for song of the summer? Don’t count it out. (Josh Pauley)