Even the terrifyingly insipid rehash of this song on Thank Me Later can’t disguise the fact that this original cut is still there or thereabouts the best song of the year.
Drake spends the entirety of the track mockingly jogging backwards away from his past, mouthing ‘fuck yous’ into the camera (there’s always a camera rolling), trotting straight into his gold plated future, all the while dropping lines so confident the sun dulled a bit for trying too hard.
Definitely sounds like Drake won the Lotto twice. Worse for us still, he didn’t even need to. This is what he means when he talks about the life.
Yo La Tengo are not dead, but their spectre looms large throughout Glittering Shipwrecks‘ free-to-download EP, Monuments.
Ida and Georgia haunt each spidery reverb-heavy guitar line here, vocals transmitted from the same moonlit suburban purgatory that adorns the cover of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.
And there’s that same interalised escapism too, pushing inwards to shut off the world, rather than running outwards to be somewhere or someone else. It’s in that approach that Glittering Shipwrecks sidestep pastiche or parody, instead suggesting a shared feeling that lingers on sharper than any other band’s ghost.
“A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun’s apparent position in the sky reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes.
At the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, the apparent movement of the Sun’s path north or south comes to a stop before reversing direction.”
Is Spectrals‘ “7th Date” the downhome Northern version of Craig David’s “7 Days”?
Well, if Craig David were wracked with self-doubt, social-anxiety and didn’t have clap lights and a rotating bed in his house, then yeah, I can go for that. They seem about the same.
Bet Spectrals even chill on Sundays too.
“7th Date” is the A side from Spectrals’ forthcoming 7″ on Slumberland.
It’s tricky to comprehend that “Breath In Newcastle” was conceived and realised in a bedroom. The logistics don’t make sense. It’s too vast to be contained by any bedroom I know of, too ambitious to be that parochial.
But then small time thinking doesn’t suit a band called Atlas Young contemplating an existential crisis in the North East.
There’s no buzz here, or blog heat, or any of that boring shit that works only to shift music into boxes labeled either ‘relevant’ or ‘irrelevant’. Not yet.
Gem Club just wrote a sad and simple and beautiful song, and gave it an enigmatic title. And it feels like an antidote. Like the sun rising after the shittiest night, like the softest “thank fuck” ever eeked out by a big man with a beard.
Last Monday saw the official release of Girls Names‘ debut mini album You Should Know By Now. The 12″ sold out pretty much immediately, although Puregroove may have one or two copies remaining here. We’ve also made the record available digitally, for those unlucky enough to miss out on the 12″ itself. You can by it from all the usual places – Amazon/iTunes/eMusic et al.
The record received some excellent online coverage, including features on Pitchfork and Drowned In Sound. Check the links below. There’s also a forthcoming feature in the next issue of Stool Pigeon (alongside some writing of my own).
In related news, the band are currently in the studio recording their debut album, which hopefully will see a release later this year. We’ve some very exciting news regarding this release and we’ll be revealing more details in due course. In the meantime, you can download “Graveyard” below.
