Essential Tracks This Week: Geordie Greep, The Bug, and more
This week’s batch of Best New Releases makes the case that the fall new release rush is already here. Hope you’re ready for it! And this week’s Essential Tracks likewise offer a sampling of the diverse range of music we’re looking forward to in the coming months, from satirical prog-pop to menacing industrial dub and psychedelic post-hardcore. Here are the week’s best new songs.
Geordie Greep – “Holy, Holy”
Black Midi is over, so says the band’s leader in a recent Instagram post. But if, at least for now, we’re not in for any more of the group’s manic, mathematic chemistry, at least we have the benefit of their leader’s twisted songwriting sensibility. “Holy, Holy” is jazzy and luxurious, sleazy and sublime. Against a manic backdrop of piano, bongos and horns, Greep adds more disco excess and pathetic character study to his wild prog sensibility, with a protagonist who propositions a prostitute not for sex but solely for her to boast about his virility in front of other people. It’s a hilarious and sad saga that spirals to epic proportions, the end of one exciting gone-too-soon band perhaps, but the beginning of a whole new story entirely.
From The New Sound, out October 4 via Rough Trade,
The Bug – “Buried (Your Life is Short)”
It seems only fitting that Kevin Martin would eventually align himself with Relapse, given that the music he makes as The Bug is as heavy as anything the long-running metal label has released. One of two new singles from his upcoming album Machine, “Buried” demonstrates that intensity in action, its steady creeping industrial dub driven by a menacing, impenetrable bassline caked in distortion. True to his foundation in dub, it’s rife with spacious echo effects and never feels overstuffed, but there’s room enough for more danger just beyond the horizon.
From Machine, out October 4 via Relapse
Ka – “Such Devotion”
Brownsville, New York (brooklyn?) rapper Ka has made a habit of releasing albums without much advance notice, and such is the case with The Thief Next to Jesus, which he released just earlier this week. But with it he released a video for the first single “Such Devotion,” a darkly stoic narrative about doing what’s necessary to survive, climaxing with a chorus of “To succeed you’ve never seen such devotion.” Ka’s rapsy verses are juxtaposed against a gospel loop that’s at once powerful and eerie. It’s the sound of a veteran rapper in his wheelhouse—you recognize a Ka song when you hear it, and nothing else sounds quite like it.
From The Thief Next to Jesus, out now
Chat Pile – “Masc”
Chat Pile can do the kind of noise rock that makes you feel really sick to your stomach, disgusted with yourself and the world, screaming into the sun. They can also do noise rock that just kind of kicks ass. Sometimes they do both at once, but “Masc” is mostly the latter, a roaring crush of a song that balances rhythmic pummel against hazy sheets of guitar that makes more explicit the melancholy in Raygun Busch’s lyrics. Then again, it whips pretty hard, so if you miss that the first time around, that’s fine. You can catch it on the second or third listen.
From Cool World, out October 11 via Flenser
Kal Marks – “A Functional Earth”
Kal Marks describe “A Functional Earth” as a “trippy song about the end of the world,” and while your mileage may vary on how much imagination it requires to imagine the end of the world, this is one climactic rush of an apocalypse. Not that Kal Marks every shied away from doom and gloom in the past, of course, but here they bottle it up into a soaring dirge of psychedelic post-hardcore that shows how their songwriting continues to evolve into something more unpredictable and multifaceted. It’s not necessarily a soothing story they tell on “A Functional Earth,” but I sure love the way they tell it.
From Wasteland Baby, out September 13 via Exploding In Sound.
