Dilly Dally light up, Spellling set saill, Fews get beached, Oh Susanna holidays, Beans on Toast toasts Alexa and more in today’s Roundup. Hey, I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!
1 | Some people might think the title of Toronto alt-rock outfit Dilly Dally‘s noisy new single (and its suitably trippy video) Marijuana is a metaphor. Those people would be wrong. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “We’ve been inhaling so much fear and hate from our televisions, our leaders, social media … I don’t know about you, but the anxiety and eventual depression became overbearing. The only way I could keep functioning, and get through writing this record, was with some assistance from weed. Basically, if I didn’t write anything good by sundown — I would smoke sativa for good measure. It would clear my creative pathways, help me forget about the expectations of others, and almost hide away in my own protective energy field.” Inhale above. And stay in school, kids.
2 | Who’s in the mood for some fluffy, meaningless dance-pop? You? Then you definitely don’t want to listen to Haunted Water, the grimly moving first single from Mazy Fly, the upcoming album by Spellling (a.k.a. Bay Area-based Chrystia Cabral). SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “Haunted Water is an intensely heavy song about the memories of colonial violence that haunt the historical slave ship routes of the Middle Passage.” Hear it:
3 | They say all great movies can be summed up in six words. I don’t know if that’s true about great videos. And I don’t know if Paradiso, the latest single from the Swedish post-punks known as Fews, qualifies as a great video. But I do know I can sum it up thusly: Midnight Cowboy goes to the seaside. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “Whilst touring last year I was joking around with the guys going like Hey I’ve got a new song!” even though I really hadn’t. I just played an open E for them and yeah, they just left the room. Later we headed to Amsterdam and had two days-off — one day to party and one day to write. We got booked into Q-Factory studios and by accident I did the same joke and added ‘D-B-G’, this time everyone took notice.” Go where the sun keeps shining:
4 | Give Suzie Ungerleider credit. The singer-songwriter known as Oh Susanna has not only recorded a new holiday EP with pianist and songwriter Michael Johnston; she’s also titled it with a brand-new word she coined to describe that Christmassy feeling: Decemberly. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “Every year I look forward to getting out the Christmas music from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s,” says Ungerleider. “One January, I didn’t want to stop listening to all this good music and decided to write a song called After the Holidays inspired by all those great Jazz and Pop crooners.” Fa-la-la-la-la:
5 | Is privacy dead? It’s a good question; maybe we should ask Alexa what she thinks. Or we could ask British folk/indie singer-songwriter Beans on Toast, whose new single and video is titled after everyone’s favourite cloud-based home device — which is totally not bugging you. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “The track and it’s accompanying animated video (created using discarded Amazon boxes) is a commentary/cautionary tale that examines the future of voice-activated Internet and oncoming Amazon world domination.”
6 | Color them prolific. Or at least productive. Less than a month after D.C. electro-rockers Color Palette dropped their Chelsea single, they’re back with the tellingly titled darkwave number Dark Days. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: Nothing — propelled by a twitchy beat and broken-modem sonics, laced with rich melody and topped with swooping guitars, this gorgeously downbeat gem speaks eloquently for itself.
7 | Nobody can say Sleepless Nights aren’t woke. Especially not after listening to the East Coast outfit’s new single Pink Popcorn, which takes aim at pop-culture misogyny — and sets it to a punchy pop-rock beat. SEZ THE PRESS RELEASE: “The songs we love and are huge parts of pop culture are insanely misogynistic, but that gets subverted by nostalgia,” says Sleepless Nights frontperson A.A. Wallace. “Now that the world is getting more and more woke how to do we listen to the lyrics of Axel Rose or even Mick Jagger? How can a song like Rocket Queen or Brown Sugar be played on the radio? Driving around with classic rock radio for most people is not an academic exercise. The rules mentioned in Pink Popcorn are songwriting conventions and clichés that really we should be done with. Oh yeah, baby.” Don’t call me baby, baby:
