Florence + The Machine – ‘My Love’
If you spent any time during the pandemic longing for a sticky dancefloor, a stranger’s sweat glistening on your arm as you squeezed into the queue for the bar, and the endorphin-rush of your favourite songs booming out of a club PA, Florence + The Machine can relate. That’s why she’s named her new album ‘Dance Fever’ and the third track taken from it heads straight for the middle of the floor. “I was always able to write my way out / Song always made sense to me,” she explains on the Kate Bush-headed-to-the-disco track. “Now I find when I look down / The page is empty.” The answer? Get those limbs moving and, as the existence of this song proves, those creative juices will start flowing again.
Greentea Peng – ‘Your Mind’
“Sorry to say, but I’m here to stay,” Greentea Peng assures us in the opening seconds of her first release of the year. It’s not a shitty ex-friend or partner she’s talking to, but her own mind. The track serves as a stream-of-consciousness conversation between herself and her brain – and she’s winning her internal battle. “I see you still doubt the world is ours,” she notes. “But I’m here to shower you / With messages from higher you.”
Crows – ‘Garden Of England’
At this point, us Brits (and probably a fair few Europeans too) are extremely tired of hearing or reading the word Brexit and all the nastiness it’s promoted in the UK. If that’s you, Crows have got a new anthem for you – one that bottles up that feeling of fatigue with the whole thing and unleashes it in a two-minute punk hail of punk bullets. “No more parades in England / No more disease in England,” frontman James Cox hollers at its conclusion. Who’s gonna tell him about this summer?
Horsegirl – ‘Anti-glory’
Chicago trio Horsegirl say they wrote their new single ‘Anti-glory’ “almost by accident”. If this is what they come up with by chance, we’d hate to hear what they come up with intentionally – it’s sure to make us feel even more unaccomplished. ‘Anti-glory’, taken from their upcoming debut album ‘Versions Of Modern Performance’, is a piece of hypnotic indie-rock that stutters and tumbles through different phases, pulling you deeper into it with every little shift.
Jordana – ‘Pressure Point’
On the glitchy pop of ‘Pressure Point’, Jordana takes us into the middle of a panic attack and her attempts to exit from the heart-racing, lung-busting chaos. “Breathe in, breathe back out,” she instructs. “Wake up, countdown / The freakout is over now.” As it turns out, though, she could do with finding a new way to cope, reaching for a joint each time the pressure starts to build in her body.
