Essential Tracks This Week: Nilüfer Yanya, Fievel is Glauque, and more
We’re only a couple weeks away from shifting gears toward fall listening, and this week’s batch of Essential Tracks is starting to feel like a preview of things to come. Among the best new songs out this week are a low-simmering standout from one of the best singer/songwriters of the moment, an intricate progressive pop song, and a mournful dirge for a broken-down van.
Nilüfer Yanya – “Mutations”
The lineup of singles that Nilüfer Yanya has released thus far for her upcoming album and follow-up to 2022’s PAINLESS, My Method Actor, including recent Essential Track “Like I Say (I runaway)“, suggests it’s likely to be something special. The latest, the relatively brief, stark but endlessly rich “Mutations” continues her progression into romantically intricate Radiohead-meets-Sade material, driven by stark basslines and serene layers of guitar, with occasional abrasive elements providing a fleeting glimpse of the harshness just outside this phenomenal oasis.
From My Method Actor, out September 13 via Ninja Tune.
Fievel Is Glauque – “As Above So Below”
“Progressive pop” has been something of a buzzword in recent years, but Fievel Is Glauque deliver something that fully lives up to that description by leaning heavier into prog than most art-pop groups would be willing to go. “As Above So Below” is a gorgeous and playful set of breezy pop that reveals itself to be dazzlingly intricate throughout its duration, layering jazz guitars, strata of horns and woodwinds and ever-shifting melodic passages. It’s at once pastoral and cerebral, like a hedge formation mapped by the Fibonacci sequence.
From Rong Wiecknes, out October 25 via Fat Possum
Ibibio Sound Machine – “Black Notes”
Ibibio Sound Machine are delivering the goods in ample supply in 2024. Earlier this year they dropped Pull the Rope, an excellent album that eased back a little bit on their electro dancefloor approach without losing the groove that drives them. And now they’re offering another EP with Black Notes. Its title track is an urgent set of gospel-flavored house music, heavy on funky synth basslines and drum-machine handclaps. It’s just the summer dance banger we needed.
From Black Notes, out September 4 via Merge
Midwife – “Vanessa”
In the opening line of Midwife’s new mournful dirge “Vanessa,” it’s hard not to get the sense that Vanessa Johnston is singing about a dearly departed lover: “When I think about you I think about Florida/I remember a day in the sun/I knew that I would always love you…” That’s only partially true. The song was inspired by her no-longer-functional minivan, which becomes a stand-in for loss and regret. It’s not unlike Marissa Nadler’s “Said Goodbye to That Car,” in which a method of transportation becomes something so much bigger, and carries that much more emotional weight as a result.
From No Depression in Heaven, out September 6 via Flenser
