Preoccupations - Anxiety
★★★★
Critically acclaimed caucasian post-punk rockers Viet Cong were last year barred from performing on college campuses all over the US, accused of cultural appropriation over the name they had chosen to perform together under. (Don't get too comfy there, Arctic Monkeys. Your hour of reckoning may yet approach.) The band have since regrouped under a different name, and delivered this single on which Matt Flegel performs an uncanny impression of Iggy Pop fronting My Bloody Valentine. Which is a slightly different form of appropriation. But one that remains politically correct, for now.
Two Door Cinema Club - Are We Ready? (Wreck)
★★★
This track from Two Door Cinema Club's Gameshow album is the Co Down band's first new single since 2013. Yet, at times, it sounds much more conspicuously like a write of one of the other big pop hits of that summer: Daft Punk's Get Lucky. Linda Martin chat show cover version incoming in 5, 4, 3, 2 . . .
Eden - Sex
★★★
Twenty-year-old classically trained musician Jonathon Lei Ming is an up-and-coming Dublin artist signed to Justin Bieber's management company. His music is already gaining traction internationally, both in live performances and online. And this video from his I Think You Think Too Much of Me EP appears to be a fictional dramatisation of Harry Styles' life, post-One Direction. (Spoiler: Harry's boyish good looks are gone but he continues to enjoy a full and satisfactory sex life.)
Sir the Baptist ft. Churchpeople - Raise Hell
★★★★
"Mama says she gonna lose me / She prays the angels out on duty . . . ". In a week when events in Florida reminded us evil still exists in this world, we should remember that so also does love. Love, albeit, that still walks around like it's wearing hospital scrubs.
