Girl and Girl have announced their debut album, Call a Doctor. The follow-up to the Australian band’s 2022 EP Divorce drops on May 24 via Sub Pop and Virgin Music Australia. Lead single ‘Hello’ arrives with a music video from director Tayla Lauren. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
“‘Hello’ is the story of a young man who requires daily consults with health professionals in order to rationalise his self-destructive thoughts and routines,” frontperson Kai James said in a statement. “It’s about romanticising your own misery. Letting those deep, dark, dirty thoughts take over. Understanding that even if you could pull yourself out, you wouldn’t because the constant stress and worry are all too familiar and comfortable.”
Call a Doctor Cover Artwork:
Call a Doctor Tracklist:
1. INTRO
2. Call A Doctor
3. Hello
4. Maple Jean and the Anthropocene
5. Oh Boy!
6. Suffocate
7. Mother
8. You’ll Be Alright
9. Comfortable Friends
10. Our Love (Ours Only)
11. OUTRO
Perfume Genius has shared a cover of ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’, his contribution to the Jack Antonoff-helmed The New Look soundtrack. The track was popularized by Dinah Washington in 1959 and originally written in Spanish by María Grever in 1934. Take a listen below.
The New Look soundtrack features contributions from Lana Del Rey, the 1975, Florence and the Machine, and more. The first three episodes of the show, which focuses on the fashion industry in Paris during World War II, premiered on Apple TV+ last week.
The world of Erika de Casier feels effortlessly inviting. Up until now, the Portugal-born, Danish artist’s output has been marked by a rich interiority; she takes the idea of bedroom pop seriously, illuminating the space where pop music is commonly consumed and crafted, whether casually or with fierce passion. Sensual, textured, and elegant as her songs tend to be, she also displays a playful sense of humour that elevated her sophomore effort, 2021’s Sensational, whose title continued the tongue-in-cheek swagger of her debut, Essentials, while finding new ways to quietly exude confidence. You may or may not be aware of any of this going into de Casier’s latest album – though you’ve probably heard her work on NewJeans’ chart-topping 2nd EP Get Up or perhaps caught her remix of Dua Lipa’s ‘Physical’ – and she knows it’s kind of presumptuous to declare that she’s here Still, the kind of statement most artists don’t feel the need to make until much later in their career. It’s funny, but by the end of the album, de Casier’s journey feels subtly defiant; she welcomes the listener by promising “a lot of fun,” then shows more sides to her than either new or returning fans might expect.
As she opens up her world – to a greater range of emotion as well as collaboration – you only get a stronger sense of the person behind it. In the past, de Casier experimented with characters that allowed her to explore how she might have acted in different situations, reconfiguring how things might have played out. But even when inhabiting a more extroverted persona on Sensational, she said in our 2021 interview, “It’s still me.” Much of Still revolves around a similar idea but does away with those characters, loosely charting the rise and fall of a relationship. This time, the drama doesn’t just unfold in her mind, so there’s less retrospective reflection: on ‘Ice’, she taps Tampa rap duo They Hate Change for a track that’s pure ear candy but mired in conflict, pinpointing the moment where a partner’s indecision turns the fantasy into a thriller. “I must be getting pleasure from all of this terror,” she admits on ‘Toxic’, by which point she only leaves room for her point of view, the excitement deflating into bitterness.
De Casier is deliberate in her use of guest features, subtler the more high-profile they are and matching the vibe of the song rather than radically shifting it. Blood Orange delivers a briefly spoken word verse on ‘Twice’, yet it’s his harmonies that mesmerize, floating around in the absence of real closure; Shygirl’s appearance is less scathing than you’d expect for a track called ‘Ex-Girlfriend’, a curious and icy combination that avoids obvious PinkPantheress/Ice Spice comparisons. But with contributions from a host of producers and musicians, Still comes alive just in the way de Casier casts her presence across each instrumental. The drum ‘n’ bass beat skittering through ‘Lucky’ mirrors the rush of new love, but it’s her gentle vocals that fill out the landscape, the light seeping through the grey Copenhagen sky. The music is not just catchy but constantly evocative and ingenious: it’s one thing to talk about how “the sound of your voice is hypnotizing,” and another to then flip the sentiment around by stacking her voice into layers, reverberating with hurt as she vows to remember the details of a love affair whose colour has already faded.
Erika de Casier isn’t one to shy away from intoxicating hooks, and the album is packed with them: ‘ooh’, which contains a winking reference to her last album, boasts one of her most memorable. (The wink is literally communicated: emoticons – not emojis – dot the lyric sheet, especially on the sultrier and more lighthearted cuts.) But the album does more than showcase her melodic prowess or bask in the air of sly detachment. She tests the boundaries of her voice and identity just as she confronts the subjects of these songs; if Sensational allowed for moments of loneliness and dejection, Still opens the door to deeper introspection, which is also when de Casier pushes her sound the most. She begins by singing in her lower register over gentle guitar on ‘The Princess’, struggling to reconcile the dreams she grew up chasing with the realities of holding down a career: “I wanna do it hard and/ I wanna make love,” she sings once her voice has risen, squeezing the words hard and love like they’re tightening up her throat.
If she has to hold onto every version of herself to still be Erika de Casier, to still be moving forward, where does that leave the parts that no longer fit? It’s not that she fails on the promise of delivering a party; Still is every bit as ecstatic as it can be. But if you swore you “heard the sundown whisper,” as she does on the striking closer ‘Someone’, isn’t that the path you’d want to go down, the sound you’d want to reach for? So she lets out a long breath, and atop heavenly, cinematic pads, forwards her apology: “I said I’d hate you always/ Just ‘cause I didn’t know what to do without you.” That’s not to say she knows exactly who she is now, as that old adage, “Just be yourself,” is beginning to ring hollow. In the failure to commit to it, though, de Casier discovers the freedom of trying to be anyone at all, and in that, a kind of transcendence: the pleasure from all this terror. There’s no beat, but as a lead synth emerges, you can imagine yourself dancing to it.
Bodega have dropped a new single, ‘City Is Taken’, which will appear on their third LP Our Brand Could Be Yr Life – out April 12 on Chrysalis. Following last month’s ‘Tarkovski’, the track comes paired with a video directed by Luca Balser. Check it out below.
“‘City Is Taken’ a song about my experience of moving to NYC in 2010,” the band’s Nikki Belfiglio said in a statement. “I came to view myself and my artistic role models as a force of gentrification caught in the invisible web on profiteering that follows artists wherever they go. My visual presence became an unwitting symbol of destruction; the antithesis of everything I sought to create.”
Ben Hozie added of the video: “It starts in front of what was Goodbye Blue Monday, where I played my first show in the city way back in 2009. The camera frames key DIY spots in BODEGA’s history such as Party Expo, Palisades (where the release party for the original ‘Our Brand Could Be Your Life’ happened in 2015), Silent Barn II, Sunnyvale (where the ‘Endless Scroll’ release party was…) Shea Stadium, Death by Audio, 285 Kent, Glasslands, Monster Island, Aviv, and Cake Shop plus some classic punk spots from before our time such as Mercer Arts Center, Palladium, Tier 3, Mudd Club, and Max’s Kansas City – the track references Patti Smith’s recent dictum that young NYC artists should ‘pack (their) bags and move to Detroit’.”
Allie X has released a new single from her upcoming album Girl With No Face, which is set to arrive on Friday (February 23). It’s the fourth preview of the LP, following ‘Off With Her Tits, ‘Black Eye’, and the title track. Check out a visual for it below.
Stones Throw has announced a compilation of covers of Haruomi Hosono’s solo debut, Hosono House, celebrating 50 years since its release. It features contributions from Mac DeMarco, Sam Gendel, John Carroll Kirby featuring the Mizuhara Sisters (Kiko & Yuka), Pearl & the Oysters, Jerry Paper, Cornelius, Akiko Yano, Yuma Abe, mei ehara, rei harakami, Kukuku (Ikuko Harada and Manami Kakudo), and more. DeMarco’s cover of ‘Boky Wa Chotto’ is out today; listen to it below.
“Hosono is my hero, I love all of his music, I am eternally at his every beck and call, it is my honor to be a part of this compilation,” DeMarco said in a statement. “I recorded this cover in Joe Bird’s guest room in Paris, August 2023. I hope my Japanese pronunciation isn’t too horrible.”
Bored at My Grandamas House – the project of Leeds-based singer-songwriter Amber Strawbridge – has announced her debut album, Show & Tell. The follow-up to 2021’s Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too comes out June 7 via CLUE Records/EMI North. It includes the previously released single ‘Inhibitions’, and the title track is out today. Check it out along with the album cover and tracklist below.
‘“Show & Tell’ is quite a tongue-in-cheek song about me being the opposite of an open book and all the little specific things about me that I sometimes wish were different,” Strawbridge explained in a statement. “Overall it’s about me being a guarded person and fearing the possibility of having to be vulnerable and realising that vulnerability is actually a beautiful thing and something i shouldn’t be so scared of.”
Discussing the album, she said:
The main overall theme of this album is connection. Connection with myself, connection with the world and connection to the people around me who I love. This album is for me first and foremost and was a way for me to internally process.
The origin of these tracks all stem from me wanting to understand these connections and process my emotions surrounding them. The album covers topics such as the power of queer love, humanity and its ‘delusions of grandeur’, reflection and purpose.
It would be unwise to say that I haven’t developed and changed a lot since my EP. I’ve experienced more, questioned more, felt more and allowed myself to be vulnerable more – which I hope translates throughout the Album.
1. Intro
2. Inhibitions
3. Show & Tell
4. Friendship Bracelets
5. Heavy Head
6. How Do You See The World?
7. I Like What You Bring Out In Me
8. Don’t Do Anything Stupid
9. Imposter Syndrome
10. Moving Slow
11. We See The World
12. Hide & Seek
The Staves have shared another single from their upcoming album All Now, which arrives on March 22 via Communion Records. ‘I’ll Never Leave You Alone’ follows previous offerings ‘All Now’ and ‘I Don’t Say It, But I Feel It’. Listen to it below.
“This song is about balancing all the intricate parts and many faces of self and womanhood and the feelings of doubt that come from containing these multitudes,” the duo said in a statement about ‘I’ll Never Leave You Alone’. “It’s about learning to navigate and live with them. To make friends with your doubt and with yourself.”
Drahla have dropped a new single, ‘Second Rhythm’, alongside an accompanying video created by the band. It’s the second single from their upcoming LP angeltape, following last month’s ‘Default Parody’. Check it out below.
angeltape, the follow-up to 2019’s Useless Coordinates, is due to arrive on April 5 via Captured Tracks.
Ahead of the release of their new album The Past Is Still Alive on Friday, February 23, Hurray for the Riff Raff has shared one more single called ‘Hawkmoon’. Following previous cuts ‘Colossus of Roads’, ‘Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)’, and ‘Alibi’, the track comes with a music video starring Alynda Segarra alongside actor and musician Denny (Pose, City on Fire). Check out the Jeff Perlman-directed clip below.
“‘Hawkmoon’ is a song about running away – a trans song, and memories of the first trans woman I ever met,” Segarra explained in a statement. “Miss Jonathan was a German rapper, poet and train-riding crusty homeless kid who loved to wear the skimpiest outfits she could get away with and was a surprisingly great shoplifter. We became best friends for a winter, before I learned to play music in New Orleans, and I would ride shotgun in her beat up car and search for abandoned houses to sleep in. Meeting her changed my life and opened doors in my mind about gender, though it would take me many, many years to feel free enough to expand within myself. I have always wanted to honor her, since I have not seen her in decades and wonder if she is even alive. She suffered a lot of violence the last time we saw each other, and I think about her often.”