2023's "ray of light"
Discover more from The Unskippables
2023's "ray of light"
new tracks from caroline polachek, rebecca black, jessie ware, decisive pink & caroline rose
Late send this week! Mostly because too many interesting new records dropped yesterday – I barely had time to process Lana Del Rey’s excellent new single, which adroitly finds the balance between Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” and Fiona Apple’s Tidal.
Also - RIP Burt Bacharach. If you read one thing on his legacy, Nelson George’s piece on Bacharach and Black voices is probably it.
On to this week’s best tracks! As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter.
Caroline Polacheck feat. Dido and Grimes - Fly To You
If hyperpop made drum-n-bass and jungle textures cool again, Caroline Polachek’s new record might have everyone running back to the dollar bins to find their copy of Ray of Light, fully reviving “electronica” sounds in her new album. Pitchfork had been winding up for this Best New Music since giving Polachek the #1 single of 2021. Disliking the advance singles from this album became my “don’t get me started” rant of the last year, but I have to say my mind was totally changed hearing the songs in the context of her new record Desire, I Want To Turn Into You – the album is a cohesive world of Orbital bass, sharp sonic turns and Caroline’s lilting miasmas. She built a fort for you to hang out with her, and some of the conspicuous sonic choices, like the acoustic guitar break in “Blood and Butter,” suddenly make perfect sense as part of the record’s unified argument. “Fly To You” is the album highlight, going full 1998 with its skittering break, sine wave bass, and chillout tent nylon-string guitar carrying Polachek, Dido, and Grimes into the clouds.
Rebecca Black - Destroy Me
Pitchfork savaged the debut album from Rebecca Black this week, ignoring this very fun hyperpop jam in its front third. Revelatory? Maybe not! But it threads the needle between pop punk crunch and PinkPantheress-lite bedroom garage nicely and has been on rotation for me for the last week.
Jessie Ware - Pearls
I’m fully a sucker for Jessie Ware’s disco pivot, and her latest campy, flirtatious single “Pearls” has me in its clutches. It’s decadent and lightly silly - “shake it til the pearls fall off!!” - but it’s a perfect spotlight for Ware’s voice and chemistry.
Decisive Pink - Haffmilch Holiday (Jane Weaver Remix)
Jane Weaver said of this remix of this Angel Deradoorian/Kate NV track "I was instantly channelling The Plastics and Harmonia whilst imagining a cyclic cartoon version of my dream collaboration” and she nails it – this is Casio-plastic motorik, like if Neu! wrote music to listen to at the mall.
Caroline Rose - The Doldrums
A slow-burn track from Caroline Rose that blooms and evolves through its three and a half minutes. Says Rose, “My idea of rebirth and reformation at the time was killing off my old self and finding a new one, rather than simply being kind to myself…Not because I didnʼt want to be, but because I didnʼt really know how.”
throooowbackkkkk
Cleaners from Venus - Only A Shadow
I was struck by this tweet from Cleaners from Venus’ Martin Newell on some of the strange upsides of Spotify and streaming platforms for giving tracks a second life. I had actually never heard “Only A Shadow” — and it was wild to hear such an intimate DIY track forty years on still wiggle with urgency.
