Essential Tracks This Week: Lost Girls, MJ Lenderman, and more
If you’re not Pitchforking and Barbenheiming this weekend, you’re probably trying to stay inside where it’s air-conditioned (that’s what we’re doing!). But you’re going to need a good soundtrack while you’re there, and we’ve got five extra-good, Treble approved new essential tracks for you to turn up—hypercharged power pop, post-punk-inspired electronic pop, ripping thrash metal and more.
Lost Girls – “Ruins”
In 2021, Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden made their debut as Lost Girls, exploring epic expanses of electronic pulses and bright, gleaming synthesizers—a sprawling yet club friendly permutation of the kind of art-pop Hval does so spectacularly as a solo artist. With “Ruins,” however, that approach takes on a subtler, sleeker evolution, driven by a post-punk bassline, distant guitar jangle and saxophone, turning their beat-driven exploration into something with a more ominous shadow but a taut, physical sensibility of a more analog band. Hval’s vocals remain gorgeous, haunting, while the music creeps and broods, a suggestion that only something good can result from the Norwegian singer/songwriter going full Siouxsie.
Out now via Smalltown Supersound
MJ Lenderman – “Rudolph”
MJ Lenderman’s band Wednesday released one of the best albums of the year thus far with Rat Saw God, but the North Carolina singer/songwriter and guitarist has more up in sleeve for 2023. His first single through his freshly inked signing with Anti- is a country rock anthem that layers gloriously escalating guitars on top of each other in an ecstatic expression of raw feeling, with Lenderman lamenting “I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you.” Not the usual heartbroken fare, but Lenderman’s as concerned with wordplay as he is with expressions of emotion, and lines like “He’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse till it burns” just roll off the tongue.
Out now via Anti-
The Armed – “Everything’s Glitter”
“Everything’s Glitter” is a fitting phrase to describe the next phase of the enigmatic and consistently evolving Detroit post-hardcore collective. The Armed coined the term ULTRAPOP to describe the hook-driven but maximalist sound they delivered on their blistering but bright 2021 album, and now they’re focused even more on the pop than before. “Everything’s Glitter” is just that: A gleaming pop anthem with a soaring chorus and all the signifiers of the band’s more hardcore driven sounds of the past—squealing guitars, BPMs clocked at a sprint. At one point in the song, vocalist Tony Wolski asks, “Am I a caricature?” It’s hard to answer a question like this when there’s no precedent for the kind of endorphin-rush pop that the band is making.
From Perfect Saviors, out August 25 via Sargent House
Vagabon – “Do Your Worst”
Laetitia Tamko’s first couple of albums were charmingly understated sets of warmly pretty art-pop, understated but satisfying. But the singles leading up to her new album Sorry I Haven’t Called showcase an artist finding freedom in a wider variety of sounds, the drum ‘n’ bass-driven beats of “Do Your Worst” a welcome surprise following a pair of similarly electronics-tinged tracks. This is the best of the bunch so far, a maximalist but still nocturnal pop song that maintains a wonderfully seductive darkness even when going for bigger, more challenging sounds.
From Sorry I Haven’t Called, out September 15 via Nonesuch
Fugitive – “Blast Furnace”
Returning with another new single after making their EP debut last year, Texas thrashers Fugitive (featuring former Power Trip guitarist Blake Ibanez) come crashing through the gates with another injection of raw intensity, big riffs and Slayer-sized menace. The group still mostly stick to a no-frills take on thrash, delivering an efficient and effective barrage of power chords and squealing solos that call for a swarm of shaggy manes to bang in unison. “Blast Furnace” is exactly the kind of summer heavy metal that I live for—raw, fast, loud and fun.
Out now
